All Quiet on the East Coast
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: When Ruby's mum goes on another TOD, she goes to live with her dad for the first time in 10 years. She's been friends with the McGowans since birth, and becomes Megan's best friend and ally.
1. Chapter 1

**A.N.**: I just don't think Sean gets enough love. I was inspired by _Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants_, _Outnumbered_ and, oddly, _Kingdom of Heaven_, my History module 'American Popular Culture Since 1945', the blog _Little Cotton Rabbits_ and, oddly, my brother's trip through Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam last summer, and my own trips for my Classical Civilisation class through Greece and Italy for the ancient archaeological sites.

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><p><strong>All Quiet on the East Coast<strong>

_01_

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><p>"<em>STOP BARKING AT ME AS IF I WAS ONE OF YOUR RECRUITS!<em>" Ruby screamed, bellowing her mother's anger; she saw it in the Lieutenant Commander's eyes, fathomless near-black ones that Ruby thankfully had not inherited.

"_DON'T RAISE YOUR VOICE AT ME_!"

"_THEN STOP ISSUING ORDERS LIKE I'M ONE OF YOUR MINDLESS MARINES!_"

"_I TOLD YOU NOT TO SHOUT!_"

"_HARK WHO'S TALKING!_"

"Ruby—_Stop it!_" Lieutenant Commander Kingsley shrieked, and Ruby felt her rage, white hot, just under her skin; she felt as if she were about to spontaneously combust in her passion; blood pounded past her ears and she knew her face was as red as her mother's—another trait she had inherited from her mother, the inability to hide her rage from her face; it always flooded with colour when she was angry and upset, and was completely undignified and unpleasant. She knew—her mother looked livid, her face completely red, her lips white and her nostrils flared.

"_YOU'RE SO SELFISH! YOU PUT THE NAVY BEFORE YOUR FAMILY, AND THAT'S WHY DADDY LEFT YOU. IF YOU'D BOTHERED TO SPEND ANY TIME WHATSOEVER WITH ME, YOU'D KNOW I'VE BEEN HAVING SEX FOR YEARS. But you're too damn selfish to think about anyone but yourself!_" She finished, her throat hoarse, chaffed and raw from screaming—the argument had been going on for ages and she was sure their neighbours could hear every word.

"_You're sixteen years old!_" Lieutenant Commander Kingsley screamed. "_YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE SEX_. _You should never let yourself get into situations like this, like with that boy_—"

"That _boy_'s name is Garrett and we've been seeing each other for three months, ever since we _moved here_. If you ever stuck around this place long enough, you might _know_ that, since he spends practically every night over here—because he knows _you_ won't be here. And he's not even my first, not by a long-shot!"

The argument had begun, really, yesterday, when Ruby had been saying goodbye to Garrett—in their way: Hard and fast and selfish, the way their entire relationship had been. Garrett loved sex and Ruby knew better than to expect anything long-term while she was still hitched to her mother's career-Navy wagon; they were perfect for each other, both selfish when it came to their sexual needs, and almost insatiable in their appetite.

Lieutenant Commander Kingsley didn't know that, of course. If she ever gave pause to think about Ruby at all, she probably assumed that Ruby was some chaste-minded virgin.

If Ruby had learned anything from being a Navy brat, it was that things that appeared set in stone were nearly always transient, and people she knew one day were replaced by another set when she moved another thousand miles away. She had learned to grab the boys by the pants, or she would just sit out on her life while her mother pursued her career.

She was going to _shock_ her mother.

"You had that boy over here, when I wasn't at the house?" Lieutenant Commander Kingsley stood before her, in her Navy whites, her fair hair swept into a severe bun, her makeup minimal; she looked irate that a man had snuck into the women's barracks.

_She doesn't know the half of it_, Ruby thought, with a mixture of contempt and amusement. Her mind raced with flashes of memories she had made in this house—one of several others she had made her mark in with the local high-school boys. Three months of perpetual sun, it hadn't been unusual for Ruby to spend days at a time at Garrett's house, or camping out with her friends, or passed out at the field where all the local parties were held outside the base.

"You don't give a shit what I do in this house, let alone outside it," Ruby remarked, smirking, "otherwise you would have caught me with Stacy when you were stationed at Pearl." They had lived in Pearl Harbour before spending three months at the Naval base in Greece; Greece had been their last stop before here, Charleston, South Carolina. "You don't even know who _he_ is, do you?"

"You are _not_ allowed to have boys over when I'm not here to supervise," Lt. Cdr. Kingsley said sternly, her eyes narrowing and her nostrils going white. Ruby crowed gleefully.

"Supervise? You're so goddamn clueless what I get up to I could be having an orgy in the backyard and you wouldn't even know, you'd still be at the base, working," she sneered. "It's _way_ too late for you to try and exert some kind of paternal influence. You shot that privilege to hell _years_ ago."

"That boy could be dangerous—for all I know, he is!" Lt. Cdr. Kingsley snarled, her flat black eyes narrowed.

"Please!" Ruby laughed. "Garrett has a huge cock and knows what to do with his tongue—and he's too stoned most of the time to do anyone any harm."

"Ruby!"

Ruby had never before spoken to her mother about anything. The truth of the matter was that, if Ruby ran away, Lieutenant Commander Kingsley wouldn't even _notice_. She spent so much time at the base that she didn't notice—she _hadn't_ noticed—that for three months Ruby hadn't even been enrolled at school while they were living in Greece. _Three months_. The entire time they'd been living in Greece—and it hadn't been like now, in the middle of summer. The Lieutenant Commander was always _working_, testing aircrafts and training, being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan—this was to be her third tour.

And Ruby knew she could do whatever she wanted, and nobody would care. Or even notice. Parents of the friends she made along the way, throughout her mother's many moves, often grew disconcerted that Ruby never mentioned her mother, or even called to ask permission to stay over when she ended up sleeping at her boyfriends' houses for nearly a week. Her friends wanted to go on a day-trip? Go camping, or go to a concert? She never asked permission, or even told the Lieutenant Commander where she was going. Because she never noticed that Ruby wasn't there. Before Greece, where she had spent the three months she should have been at school working in a tiny family-owned bakery, learning fluent Greek, the Lieutenant Commander didn't know that, in Pearl Harbour, Ruby had spent nearly every day ditching school, surfing and snorkelling with Stacy.

The Lieutenant Commander didn't know that Ruby had lost her virginity at the age of fifteen, on the hood of a Chevy Impala she'd helped her boy-friend of the time, Jake, completely rebuild. She didn't know that Ruby had been on the pill since that time. She didn't know that Ruby couldn't wait until she turned eighteen, when she could get the hell away from her.

She didn't know who the hell Ruby was. But Ruby did. And she _loved_ being who she was. She was Ruby: ecstatic; irrepressible; fidgety; overenthusiastic; and a self-professed nymphomaniac. She loved sex. She loved _boys_.

She loved being Ruby Thorne: she loved laughing; loved chattering away with people, being bouncy all the time; she loved her hobbies—skateboarding, surfing, rollerblading, documenting everything she did with a camera and her beautifully illustrated and personalised journals—and she loved, loved, _loved_ sex. And she'd had _lots_ of it, ever since that first time with Jake on the hood of that gorgeous '68 Impala.

God, she had loved Jake; they had spent all their days working on his car, getting high in his room, having sex and just generally getting into trouble, to Gramity's amusement.

"What?" Ruby smirked, crossing her arms over her chest. "You're trying to act all _motherly_. Isn't this the part where we open up and pour our hearts out? I can tell you a _lot_ more. If I knew you didn't actually give a shit, I would tell you a _lot_ more."

"That is _not_ fair!"

"Yes it is!" Ruby hissed. "Your baby is the Navy; it always has been. If you didn't want to be my mommy, you should've let me go with Daddy when he left you!"

Ruby's father had left on Christmas Eve when she was seven. She could still remember watching her dad, a shadow disappearing into the snow, after the argument had shaken the very foundations of their house. Her parents had officially divorced by the time she was eight, and Ruby hadn't seen her beloved Daddy since.

"He left _us_," her mother snarled, her shoulders whipping back straight in defence.

"He left _you_," Ruby said venomously, "because the only thing you ever cared about was yourself. And you didn't let him take me with him. After ten years of you neglecting me, you're going to try and start telling me how I live my life? You're going to try and play the Mom-card on me? You lost that privilege. Only Gramity and Regina have any kind of loyalty from me."

"I am still your mother."

"I'm working to disprove that," Ruby hissed. "You're Lieutenant Commander Kingsley. I'm just some luggage you cart around behind you whenever you get another position. Well, you know what, I'm glad I'll be old enough to ditch _you_ for once, by the time this tour is over."

Lieutenant Commander Kingsley reached out and struck Ruby around the face.

Anger so virulent, Ruby wanted to kill her seared through her veins. The colour leached from the Lieutenant Commander's face, as she stared up at Ruby.

"You hit like a girl," Ruby said coldly, striding away without showing how much the slap had hurt—because the Lieutenant Commander _had_ struck her hard. At the front-door, Ruby paused, fixing her mother with a look so venomous the smaller woman took several steps back. "You will never see me again."

She left the house, slamming the door behind her. A taxi waited outside the government-issue base house. She'd heard the horn just before the argument had started up again; Ruby hadn't bothered to say goodbye. One way or the other, she hadn't cared that the Lieutenant Commander was going off again; she always did. This was her third tour; the first, Ruby had stayed for eight months with the McGowan family, her oldest and best friends. The second tour had been cut short by Gramity's surprise, heartbreaking death. This time, Ruby was going to live with her _daddy_.

By the time this tour-of-duty was over, Ruby would be eighteen and so far gone even the Navy's state-of-the-art satellites wouldn't pick her up.

The cab-driver helped load the last few bags and things into the back of his taxi: most of Ruby's possessions had already been shipped to Massachusetts, to her daddy's house.

She was going to be living with him for the duration of her mother's tour; that was the rest of _high-school_. The prospect of living in _one_ place for the next _two years_ was astronomical. Three months in Charleston, three in Greece, a few in Pearl…

Ruby had been a Navy brat since birth; the Lieutenant Commander had given birth and gone back to flying, and their family had moved around the globe to accommodate her rising status in the Navy officer ranks.

Since her parents' divorce, Ruby had moved with the Lieutenant Commander every six months, like clockwork—unless they spent a few months here, a few months there, spent a little while at that place, and then spent a fixed term at such and such a Navy base.

The longest Ruby had ever lived anywhere since she was about seven was with the McGowans, during another of her mother's tours of duty, when she was twelve. She had lived, from June one year to August the next, in Massachusetts with the sprawling, rambunctious McGowan family, had completed her entire sixth-grade year in one place. It was the last year she had actually done well in school.

Two years with her _daddy_ seemed astronomical.

And her giddiness over seeing him completely erased any lingering thoughts of the Lieutenant Commander. Her excitement over seeing her _daddy_ for the first time in _ten years_ was palpable—as was her eagerness to see the McGowans again.

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><p><strong>A.N.<strong>: I recycled chapter one of _Where the Wild Things Are_ because I was contemplating rewriting that story, and don't know whether to submit this as a different story entirely.


	2. Chapter 2

**A.N.**: This is a _teen_ story: there will be mature themes, and there will be issues with negligent parents; death; sex; gossip; step-families; parties and motorcycles; Popsicle Wars and poison-secreting spiders.

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><p><strong>All Quiet on the East Coast<strong>

_02_

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><p>Ruby didn't know what to expect from her <em>daddy<em>. She hadn't seen him in at least a good _ten_ years. What she did remember was buried deep in the mists of time, and the sparse collection of photographs she had showed him teaching her how to ride a juicy red bicycle, and holding her nearly an hour after she was born. Drawing on what she had memorised of his features in those photographs, she scanned the airport after collecting her luggage.

Apparently, Ruby _was_ her daddy. In her tiny family, she had never before seen_ herself_ in any of her family-members—in Gramity, and definitely not in the Lieutenant Colonel. Gramity—Grandma Amity, the name Ruby had never, as a child, been able to differentiate as two separate words—was her mother's mother, and the most über-awesome hippie-esque woman Ruby had known; until the day she had died, Gramity had loved pedicures, _The_ _Rolling Stones_ and trawling for boys. But Ruby hadn't looked a thing like her, for all their personalities had been similar.

But her daddy, Matthew Thorne, he had the same rich olive skin as Ruby's, which tanned brown as a nut in persistent sunshine, and his blue-grey eyes glowed in his tanned face as an enormous grin flashed handsomely. His hair was darker by a few shades, more black than her rich, dark brown, and touched a little at the temples with dark-grey. Her nose was littler than her father's, sweeter, but Gramity had always said that Ruby had her Nana Freya's lips. Nana Freya being her father's mother, and one of Gramity's best-friends until the day she died.

The in-laws had loved each other more than the husband and wife, and their mothers had found it inevitable that they had divorced; yet Freya and Amity had remained friends the rest of their lives. Nana Freya had come to Florida when Gramity had died, the first time Ruby had spent time with her other grandmother since she was a very little girl; they had spent a few days together, before the Lieutenant Commander had showed up, relieved early from her tour for Gramity's funeral, but those afternoons shone out in her memory.

Ruby and her father both had Nana Freya's beautiful eyes, though Ruby's were fringed with dark, very fine lashes, rather than her father's thick, enviable curling ones; her father had aged handsomely.

And Ruby _had her father's hands_. She saw that instantly. In the photograph she had of her daddy holding her an hour after her birth, she had already showed signs of having his hands. Now, her hands were just as large, and her fingers were long and slender and elegant; but they were the same shape, even their fingernails, though Ruby's were more elegant, since she had stopped biting them at the age of twelve.

Ruby _was _her father. It was almost alarming how happy it made her that she looked so like her father. That she looked so like someone in her _family_. She had an abundance of very long, beautifully rich, soft dark-brown hair that curled wonderfully at the ends, and Nana Freya said that came from her paternal grandfather—who had died two weeks after she was born. Ruby had sort of anticipated that her daddy would have her same curly hair, too. He didn't, but she could see where she got all her looks from.

Just as she recognised him, her daddy saw her and openly gaped, grinning, his eyes dancing with delight as she ran at him.

A six-foot sixteen-year-old was something to see—especially laden down with luggage and bounding toward her father as if she was a six-year-old in a tutu and sparkling tiara, no thought to the other fliers.

She couldn't hug her father tight enough, couldn't stop herself laughing. Neither, it seemed, could her dad. He hugged her back just as hard, chuckling deep in his chest, and when he released her to cup her face, he let out a choked laugh, his eyes sparkling.

"Mom told me you grew up beautiful!" he declared, grinning from ear to ear. "Didn't mention you were so _tall_." Ruby laughed, grinning. She couldn't stop smiling.

"Six foot even," she beamed proudly.

"Never seen a six-foot ballerina," her dad chuckled.

"Ah, I quit dancing when I was twelve," Ruby shrugged easily; her dad's eyebrows rose.

"_Really_?" he asked curiously.

"Yeah. There was an incident with Sean McGowan, the climbing-tree and my tibia that cut short my career as a prima ballerina," Ruby said sorrowfully, jutting out her lower lip as her shoulders slumped. Her dad chuckled, and she grinned. "There were some benefits that came out of it, though."

"Like what?" her dad chuckled, as he took one of her two medium-sized leather duffel-bags, her camera-bag, her artists' portfolio and her rolled-up sleeping-bag; she kept hold of the cart on which the other duffel-bag, her laptop-bag (in which she kept her _Nintendo DS_, her _PSP Go_, her iPod speakers and all her games), and the cardboard-box filled with the last of her knickknacks rested.

"Well, I improved my aim with a baseball _phenomenally_," Ruby said, "using Sean's head a target, and I won the inter-house _Halo_ championship three times in a row. Plus, I had Ian trained to bring me frozen lollies every time I rang a little bell." As her father chuckled, guiding her out of the terminal, she said, "It's so weird how you live in the same town as the McGowans now. I'd never have thought you'd settle down there. Nana Freya said you were living in California when I saw her."

For a moment, her dad glanced at her, and she saw the swift expression of concern that lighted his pale eyes. Her stomach flipped. She was unused to that kind of observation. Did he know instantly that talking about the time she had seen Nana Freya made her upset, since it called to mind _why_ she had met her other grandmother after so many years? When her grandmother Amity had passed away suddenly? Her dad gave her a soft smile.

"Yeah, I was living in California when I heard about your Grandma Amity," he said sadly, "and I'm sorry I couldn't have been there." Ruby fiddled with the handlebar of the cart as they paused before crossing the road to the parking-lots.

"Why weren't you?" she asked quietly, sending her a sidelong look.

"I was in Milan," her dad said, after a heavy sigh. "I was already there on meetings when Mom called me." Ruby nodded. Glancing at her father, she said quietly, "Did you ever see the Last Supper?"

"In Milan?" Dad said, grinning. "My company paid for a private viewing!"

"Bastard!" Ruby blurted, wide-eyed, making her dad laugh. "I had to buy tickets and everything with all the sweaty tourists!"

"You've been to Milan?" her dad asked interestedly.

"I've been _lots_ of places," Ruby said emphatically, glancing at her dad with a sly grin.

"Why don't I like the sound of that?" he winced. She just chuckled, flashing him another grin.

"I'll tell you, but you have to remember statute of limitations applies," she chuckled.

"How so?" her dad grinned.

"Well, since I wasn't living with you at the time, you can't punish me for what I did while I was living with the Lieutenant Commander," Ruby said; her dad did an odd double-take, brows quirked, as she said 'Lieutenant Commander' but he appeared to brush it aside that she didn't call her mother 'Mom'. _As if I ever would. Regina's my _real _mommy_, Ruby thought, her excitement racketing up another notch at the prospect of being only a skateboard-ride away from her favourite family.

"Okay," her dad said slowly, as he flicked his car-keys, and the lights of an unassuming but beautiful gunmetal-silver Mercedes.

"Hang on a minute—you didn't abandon the _baby_, did you?" Ruby gasped, eyeing the Mercedes. Her dad grinned.

"No! Of course not!" he grinned hugely. "That bike was your granddad's. And I got her all waxed up and shining, since I know she'd want to be at her best before you go see her."

"Yes!" Ruby exclaimed giddily. "Can we take her for a ride? Can we? Can we?" Her dad chuckled.

"Of course we can," he said softly. "Now, are you going to tell me about the things that'll probably give me a heart-attack?"

"Okay, well, when we were stationed in Japan, I thought, hell, how many chances am I gonna get? So me and some of my guy-friends saved up some cash, and then we toured Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, hostel to hostel," Ruby said, helping her dad pile her things strategically into the trunk of the car.

"_Wow_," her dad's eyebrows flew up. "Even I've never been to any of those countries. What was it like?" Ruby paused, frowning, as she nestled her camera-bag carefully in between her duffel-bags. Straightening up, she said, "You never forget the killing-fields."

Her dad let out a breath, looking a little startled. "I'll bet."

Lightening the mood, Ruby grinned, "And you _never_ tell people that you'll eat just about _anything_." Her dad laughed. "Nah, we had a really good time."

"How old were you when you were in Japan?" her dad asked.

"I was nearly fifteen," Ruby said, glancing at her dad, whose eyebrows had risen. "I already looked twenty-one, though—according to my friends. Kinda the Brooke Shields effect." She indicated her great height.

"Ah, Brooke Shields," her dad grinned. He gave her a thoughtful, considering look. "You do look older than seventeen. Still, how did you get past customs and things?"

"Oh, it was easy," Ruby shrugged. "I just did my homework. And after Cambodia and Vietnam, when we were living in Italy and Greece, it was a lot easier to go off on weekend trips to see all the ancient archaeological sites. I made it a point to see all the sites I could, because I might not go back, you know?"

"Amity's adventurous spirit passed on to you, did it?" her dad said, his tone smiling and warm rather than angry. She was surprised he wasn't at least a little bit livid that she'd gone AWOL to different cities—and in some cases foreign _countries_—while under her mother's _care_.

"Absolutely!" Ruby grinned.

"What did your mother think to these adventures?" her dad asked.

"Oh, she didn't know," Ruby said lightly, shutting the trunk door, and slipping around the side of the Mercedes to climb in. Used to the blistering heat of South Carolina in summer, when her skin seared as she sat on the leather upholstery it didn't bother her very much. In Garrett's truck, she used to sit in tiny shorts on the battered leather seat, one leg either side of the gearstick, with Garrett's hand resting between her thighs; _heat_ was exquisite and exotic, and brought to mind some of her favourite memories. Not just of Garrett, but of Stacy in Pearl, and her time with Gramity, and with the McGowans.

Her dad climbed into the driver's seat and frowned at her subtly as he jammed the keys into the ignition.

"How could she not know?" he asked, but he didn't sound angry. At least, not at Ruby. She shrugged, buckling her seatbelt.

"If she'd ever bothered to search my room, she'd have seen evidence of my tours around Italy and Greece, and she'd have seen the photographs I took in Cambodia and Vietnam—but she didn't. And when I went on weekend trips around Greece and Italy, I'd leave notes on Friday afternoons before I left, saying I was going to a friend's house. Don't know if she ever got them or not. She works on the weekends," Ruby said unconcernedly. The sting of her mother's slap had left her face, but the fresh memory of it seared anger through her. "Honestly, nobody ever noticed me enough to realise when I wasn't where I should have been. But don't worry," she said, shooting her troubled-looking dad a grin, "I'm not going to do that to you. You'll actually notice if I'm not in my room."

"Notice?" Her dad said, flashing her an easy grin, though his eyes still looked a little troubled. "Hon, I've already bought myself a shotgun to ward off rabid teenaged boys. And by the looks of you I think I'll be needing it!" He reached out and ran his fingertip over the tip of her nose. "Pretty girl, you got beautiful." Ruby smiled softly, pleased. Only Gramity and Nana Freya had called her beautiful before. And Stacy, but he was whipped.

"Is this the appropriate time to tell you that I'm boy-crazed?" Ruby asked, grinning. Her dad laughed. "But don't worry; I know how to keep them well-trained."

"You always did," he said softly, pulling out of the parking-lot. "You're the only girl in the world who could run circles around the _McGowan _boys."

"That is so sweet of you!" Ruby grinned, and her dad laughed. "Man, this is a _nice_ _car_!"

"Do you still like cars?" her dad asked.

"Like? I _love_ cars!" Ruby said, about to blurt, _I lost my virginity on the hood of one_, but didn't think her _daddy_ would like to hear that. "But mostly motorcycles. I actually want to do the whole Kerouac thing—on a Harley. I still haven't been to all fifty states, you know! My list of _National Parks to Visit Before I'm Twenty-One_ is sorely behind. What about you?"

"Me?" her dad smiled.

"Yeah!" Ruby grinned. "Which National Parks do you want to see? Or have you visited already?"

"My favourites are Monument Valley, Yellowstone, and the ones in Alaska," her dad said, smiling: Ruby pouted; she had never been to either.

"What about the Grand Canyon?" Ruby asked. "I still haven't seen it, but I want to. And I've been to Yosemite and Sequoia—I still have my redwood bookmark—and Gramity took me to all the National Parks in Florida. One every month. When it wasn't Bunco or Mah-jong."

"My dad took us to see the Grand Canyon when I was a kid," her dad said, giving her a wry little smile. "It snowed." Ruby laughed.

"It didn't!"

"Dad took so long trying to take a _professional_ photograph, Mom and I almost pushed him over the edge," her dad chuckled, and Ruby grinned. "There should be a photo around somewhere. Maybe Mom has it."

"I like Nana," Ruby said lightly, canting her head as she gazed out the window, watching the freeway fly by, beautiful scenery replacing the city as they left Boston for the quiet, wealthy suburban towns surrounding it.

"She was _thrilled_ to spend time with you," her dad said, giving her a warm smile. "Just about made her decade, seeing you again. She showed me _all_ the pictures she took, gave me blow-by-blow accounts of what you two got up to."

Ruby laughed; looking back, she could laugh about it now. But when she had spent time with Nana Freya, she had still been in shock over Gramity. Nana Freya had helped her chuckle and smile again, but when the Lieutenant Commander had returned from her latest tour and whisked her off to her new station in Italy, Ruby hadn't really smiled in a long time. Oh, she always _smiled_; everybody who knew her told Ruby she was the happiest, most exciting person they'd ever met. She was always happy; ask anyone. But in those few short months after Gramity's death, when she had found herself in Italy, the smile hadn't reached her soul. Gramity's death had crushed her.

"So who was this boyfriend of yours I heard so much about?" her dad asked slyly, glancing at Ruby, who laughed.

"When I was living with Gramity? Well, he wasn't my _boyfriend_...as much as he was a boy who is my friend. Jake," Ruby said wistfully. Blue eyes like cornflowers, blonde hair streaked with engine-grease, the most devilish smile in the whole world—Gramity used to call him 'quicksand'; in other words, _trouble_. He was her first.

"Well, Mom thought he was fantastic," her dad chuckled.

"That's because she liked watching him tune his truck shirtless," Ruby laughed, and her dad blurted a laugh. "What? It was Florida! Very _hot_."

"Mom's terrible," her dad chuckled to himself.

"Yeah, I know. Gramity loved watching Jake, too," Ruby giggled softly. "If you combine Gramity's boy-crazed behaviour with Nana Freya _drooling_ all over Jake, I mean, it's hardly surprising, when you combine their genetics, that _I_ am such a nymphet." Her dad laughed.

"Is that a _Lolita_ reference?" he asked, chuckling.

"It _is_!" Ruby grinned. "Have you read it? I just finished it the other day, with _Finnegans Wake_ by Joyce and, um, _The Castle_, by Franz Kafka. Now I'm reading _Life: A User's Manuel_ by Georges Perec and _Suite Francaise_ by Irene Nemirovsky. I'm trying to improve my French."

"You learned French?"

"Well, I was signed up for it at school," Ruby shrugged. "I learned more when I visited France, you know, when I was living in Italy? It was only a short plane-ride, and you get the hang of the languages when you're about to claw your way through a patisserie window with your bare fingernails to order things!"

"Do you still know Arabic?" her dad asked: Ruby had grown up in a lot of Middle-Eastern countries, and she had grown up learning Hebrew and Arabic, alongside her parents' English.

"I do," Ruby smiled proudly. "And Hebrew, and now I can speak Greek fluently, too. My Italian is about as good as my French—which is _passable_, but I still need to work on it—and I still write letters to my friend in Turkey. I learned a little bit of Japanese while I was living in Tokyo. But I can't _write_ it; I can only speak it." Her dad gave her a sidelong look, shaking his head as he exhaled softly, a little stunned.

"Do you know how many companies would hire you, right this minute, just for the fact that you can speak all those languages?" he asked incredulously, smiling.

"It's no big deal," Ruby said, shrugging. "I mean, I wouldn't know Hebrew or Arabic if I hadn't grown up in the Middle-East, and I still have pen-friends there so I don't lose the languages, just like with Turkish. And Greek, I learned in three months, because I was completely immersed in it." She wondered how her dad would react when he found out she had skipped three consecutive months of school to work in a tiny family-owned bakery. He seemed laidback—_completely_ the opposite of the Lieutenant Commander—but, well…she was sixteen, and should have been at school. And that led her to wonder what he'd say when he learned the last complete year of school she'd attended was in sixth grade—staying with the McGowans. She'd averaged at four months and a few days in any one place since she was _twelve_.

"Still, that's more languages than most people ever learn in their lives," her dad said.

"That's not true—I remember that guy you used to work with, he could speak seven languages," Ruby pointed out.

"Oh, Quentin," her dad smiled. "Yeah, well, he's one of those _brilliant_ people." He sent her a sidelong look, and Ruby laughed.

"Sorry, don't expect that out of me!" she chuckled. "I may be good with languages, but that's about it!"

"Oh, I'm sure that's not true," her dad frowned subtly.

"Well, I do tune a mean carburettor, now that you mention it," Ruby said. "You know, I remember everything you ever taught me about engines. I used to tell off Sean McGowan and his grease-monkey friends for tuning up their dirt-bikes wrong." Her dad laughed.

"I can imagine," he laughed.

"Yeah, until Sean threw me over his shoulder and actually _tossed_ _me_ out of the garage like I was a rugby-ball," Ruby scowled, crossing her arms over her chest, and her dad laughed again, shaking his head. "Well, it wasn't my fault. I was bored—what with my broken tibia and all—and engines actually _consume_ my mind. Just like, um, those wooden star puzzles, you know, the brain-teaser ones? I love _them_. What do _you_ like?"

"Me?"

"Yeah. We've only been chatting about me," Ruby smiled.

"I like learning about you," her dad said softly, smiling.

"Well, I want to learn about you," Ruby grinned. She fidgeted giddily in her seat, grinning from ear to ear. "Oh, I'm so _excited_ that I get to live with you! You've no idea! Can we ride down to Main Street on Sundays to have coffee with the other bikers? I wonder if they still do that. They did when I was living with the McGowans. And what are your thoughts on _rugby_? And do you still like photography—and, hey, you still have all your books, right?" Her dad just laughed and laughed. He had a really handsome laugh, rich and carefree. She could barely remember him laughing like that—it was usually when it had been just the two of them, when he'd taken her to the ballet, or made them his special thick-thick chocolate-chip milkshakes, or they sat watching _Roseanne_ or _Home Alone_. _Especially_ when they watched _Home_ _Alone_.

"Well, what can I say about me?" her dad chuckled. "Yes, I do still have all my books—and a good few more in my collection now. I belong to a cycling club—and a photography club. I saw _you've_ got a camera-bag. Do you use digital or film?"

"Both, actually," Ruby said. "I prefer film, though. There's something so satisfying about developing my own films."

"It's a good feeling," her dad smiled knowingly. "I'll take you to the lab sometime."

"That would be cool!" Ruby smiled. "I developed all my used films before I came, so they wouldn't be ruined on the flight, but I'm always taking pictures. So, do you like sports?"

"I like baseball," her dad said.

"Whew. If you'd said you like American-football, I'd have had to smack you," Ruby sighed with relief, and her dad laughed.

"Why's that?"

"Well, and pardon my English, but American-football is just rugby for pussies," Ruby said, glancing at her dad with such a deadpan expression that he burst out laughing. "What? It is! I love rugby. They wear _no_ padding, and the aim of the game is to actually get the ball, not break each other's spines. And they only hobble off the field if their ribs are brutalised. I mean, only real men can play rugby."

"Should I mention that I got a college-scholarship for football?" her dad chuckled. Ruby glanced at him, shaking her head slowly.

"Oh, Daddy," she said softly, shaking her head, and he laughed harder. She glanced up, head canted to the side, an idea hitting her. "You and me; February; the Six Nations rugby championship. We'll watch it together. Well—I'll record it, because it'll be on at obscene times in the morning here. As long as we can have thick-thick chocolate-chip milkshakes while we watch!" Her dad laughed.

"You remember I used to make those for you?" he smiled softly, pulling off the freeway.

"Of course I do!" Ruby grinned. "I remember everything! I remember how you used to have me button your cufflinks before you went to work every morning, and we'd have fresh donut-holes for breakfast if you dropped me off at school when we lived here in the States. And you used to _read_ to me every day. D'you know, if you didn't teach me to love reading when I was a kid, I'd be a complete dunce by now."

"Because you got moved around so many times?" her dad said succinctly.

"That's exactly right," she sighed heavily.

"Well, you're going to be settled here for as long as you want to stay," her dad said gently, with decided warmth. Ruby grinned.

"And I am _beside myself about it_!" she crowed, clapping her hands in delight. "And I should let you know, I fully intend on getting my motorcycle licence. I can already ride, but, uh, it'd be nice to make it legit." Her dad chuckled. "Do you still like lamb koftas and couscous? I can make it._ And_ homemade baklava."

"Homemade baklava?" her dad grinned delightedly. "You'll have to show me how to make _that_!"

"Do you still like to cook?" Ruby asked curiously.

"That I do," her dad smiled.

"I do too," Ruby said happily. "It'll be nice to eat dinner with someone else. I really liked it, when I was with the McGowans and Gramity. We always ate together."

"Mm," her dad said, frowning subtly. "You didn't eat with your mom?"

"She works late," Ruby shrugged.

"And she works on weekends," he said, not a question. Ruby shrugged.

"Being a Navy pilot is apparently a full-time addiction," she said humourlessly. Her dad sighed, and he glanced at his dashboard.

"Got to fill up the tank," he said, smiling at her as he pulled off Main Street—Ruby hadn't realised they were _home_ already—but here was the historic Main Street with its olive-green sign over the road, and the famous _Jim's_ _Diner_; the Cold Stone Ice-Creamery and the family-owned café outside which the bikers she remembered from living with the McGowans used to congregate on Sunday mornings; there was Ipswich Street, where the weekly Farmer's Market was held; the _amazingly-_stocked public library; what looked like a tiny craft-shop; a lingerie boutique up above a privately-owned and amazing-looking florist; a boutique for little children's luxury clothing; and the town-hall, the oldest building in the town, built in 1798. There was the family-owned hardware store, and beside it, what had once been one of only two gas-stations in the Main Street area, with an upstairs patio-garden that overlooked the creek that chuckled sleepily across Main Street—"it's not boarded-up anymore!"

"No, the new owners turned it into a bookshop, with a kind of patisserie-café," her dad smiled. "It's _really_ nice in there. And it's not expensive, either—far cheaper than Starbuck's, and a much cosier atmosphere."

"Jim's is still running, though," Ruby grinned.

"Jim's will still be here after the Apocalypse," her dad chuckled.

"I miss their BLTs and chilli with home-fries," she sighed. "And their blackberry-and-apple pie."

"I just like their big-ass breakfasts," her dad grinned.

"Do you go there after cycling?" Ruby asked, and he nodded. "Not in your Lycra, I hope?" Her dad laughed.

"I put sweats on over the top, I promise," he chuckled.

"Oh, good, I can still show my face there!" Ruby said, pretending to be utterly relieved, and he chuckled, pulling off Main Street to the one remaining gas-station in the Main Street area, with its tiny old shop—once the town's _school_. When her dad got out of the car, Ruby did too, just to stand on the sidewalk and gaze down Main Street.

"I feel like running and yelling, '_I'm HOME'_!" Ruby grinned, leaping into the air in her giddiness, as her dad laughed and pumped gas into the Mercedes. "So, do you still like Pringles? And is it still Diet Coke, _never_ Pepsi?"

"How do you remember these things?" her dad laughed.

"I don't know," Ruby said thoughtfully. "I remember things like when we went to the State Fair with Nana Freya, and you had me on your shoulders, and at the end of the day when we were about to leave, you leapt up, shouting, 'I've lost Ruby! I've lost my daughter!'" Her dad laughed again. Laughing, in the sunshine, she realised how _young_ he was. He didn't just look it; he _was _young. Barely in his late-thirties; her parents had been young when they'd gotten married. "Mostly I remember you reading to me, and teaching me about bikes in our old garage."

"Yeah. It was a nice little garage, wasn't it?" her dad smiled fondly.

"It was cosy," Ruby smiled. "With that old beat-up sofa and the old footlocker filled with the blankets you used to wrap me up if it was cold out, while you worked on your bike. Listening to Zeppelin, and Granddad's old Hendrix records. Is your bike still blue, like Granddad had it? Or did you change the colour like you always wanted?"

"How do you remember all these things?" her dad chuckled, shaking his head. "_I_ barely remember those things." Ruby shrugged, smiling, as she washed and wiped the windshield. "I do remember us having tea-parties with your baby-blanket out in the yard." Ruby grinned; she remembered too. Her dad used to lie on his back, a paperback novel raised above him, and Ruby used to curl up against his side, tucked right up against him, sucking her thumb and imagining as he'd stroked her hair. "And I remember that you love Cheez-Its with strawberry jam; your favourite Disney princess was Belle; you _adored_ Patrick Swayze."

"Still do!" Ruby piped up, raising a hand to her heart. "And I mourn him daily." Her dad chuckled softly. "And for the record, I don't particularly like Belle anymore. Disney basically condoned bestiality with her. Well, all the Disney princesses are flawed. And did I _really_ like Cheez-Its with strawberry jam? That's disgusting."

"Yeah, well, you were an odd child," her dad laughed, eyes sparkling. "Why don't you tell me more about who Ruby Thorne is now."

"Oh, dangerous," Ruby grimaced. There were quite a few things she knew she would definitely have to keep to herself; her sex-life, for one. Her astronomical skill at rolling the best joints: the fact that she'd not been to school, officially, since living with Gramity in Florida. He'd find that out soon enough.

"Come on, tell me some things," her dad said, as they entered the little gas-station, which was crammed with shelves and refrigerated units.

"Okay," Ruby sighed heavily, thinking quickly; she caught sight of the bubblegum selection. "I love bubblegum. Bazooka, never fruit-flavoured. My favourite fruit is _pomegranate_—or dates, oranges, and I love, love, _love_ honey. I hate pre-packaged American candy," she said, picking up a pack of Twizzlers before crinkling her nose and dropping them back in their place. "My favourite sweets are homemade peanut brittle, baklava and chocolate-beetroot cake! I make mean fresh bread and peanut pad thai. Some other things you should know about me," Ruby said, thinking quickly, while her dad collected several things from the shelves, chuckling, "Never start an argument late at night, and never take the last strawberry. My favourite video-game is _Dynasty Warrior IV_. I still haven't seen Monument Valley, and I think Pavarotti's 'Nessun Dorma' is the most _fantastic _thing in the whole world. Rugby is the only manly sport there is. I knit everyday, and I love gold jewellery, not that cheap tack you pick up at clothing stores. When I lived in Japan and the Middle-East, I learned their tea-cultures, which is why I hate coffee—unless it's _Turkish_ coffee. I like having pedicures and surfing—_love_ Fritos and jalapeno-cheese dip. I love sushi. I'm picky about the pens and pencils I'll use—and I develop all my own photos. I love English roses, pale ones. I always buy CDs, never iTunes, and I _would_ marry Mick Jagger. I actually burned my copy of _The Handmaid's Tale_ by Margaret Atwood after I finished reading it. I've never dyed my hair, and I like white Lionhead rabbits. At the moment, I'm reading _The Dirt_ by Mötley Crüe. They snort ants, and just when you think it cannot possibly get any more disgusting, you turn the page—_and it does_! It's fantastic," she laughed, and her dad laughed, accepting his receipt. "So, tell me about you."

"Hm, well, you already remember that I'm a Coke man, never Pepsi," her dad smiled, holding the door open for her; Ruby grinned. "I love Thai food over Chinese any day. If it wasn't for Led Zeppelin, I'd say the 60s were the definitive decade for pop and rock music. Everything that came later is just crap."

"I _definitely_ agree with you there!" Ruby grinned.

"I've actually read _all_ the Harry Potters," her dad said, and Ruby chuckled; she had too. Only a few dozen _hundred_ times. Her copy of _Philosopher's Stone_ (her dad had bought it for her when she was still a baby, when they'd made a short visit to London, while they were living in Spain) was falling apart, it was so well-loved. "And I can't _wait_ for _The Hobbit_ to come out at the movies."

"Is it still your favourite?" Ruby asked, grinning from ear to ear.

"Absolutely," her dad grinned.

"I think I would've made a great Hobbit," Ruby said thoughtfully, as she tucked herself into the passenger seat. "Hell, or a dwarf."

"Not an elf?" her dad asked.

"Nah, they're way too serene," Ruby chuckled, buckling her seatbelt. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm a wee bit exuberant."

"It had come to my attention, yes," her dad laughed.

"Hey, maybe we could make a date to go see _The Hobbit_ when it comes out? I promise I won't make you dress up like a Hobbit."

"Well, with that promise, how could I refuse?" her dad laughed.

"I might, though," Ruby said, glancing at her dad, and he laughed richly. "Although, I am _pissed_ that they've got Evangeline Lilly playing a _chick_ in the film. There are no _women_ in _The Hobbit_. That's the whole part of its charm. As James Brown says, Middle Earth is a man's world."

"Maybe they'll have Evangeline Lilly play Belladonna Took in a flashback," her dad suggested thoughtfully. "Bilbo's mom."

"Nah, they'll make her some sappy elf-chick I'll want to stab," Ruby sighed, pouting. "Why do movies _have_ to have love-interests? I want to see _The Hobbit_ told like it is. Just like Harry Potter should've been."

"Oh dear," her dad chuckled. "Didn't you like the movies?"

"I'll submit my written reviews to you for leisurely perusal," Ruby said, glancing at her dad, who grinned. "The only good thing that came out of them was that Neville was actually allowed to turn into a total BAMF in the last movie. That and it launched Emma Watson's career. I was thinking of shearing all my hair off when I saw her new haircut."

"But it's so pretty," her dad pouted subtly. "You never used to have such long hair—and so _dark_."

"It started going dark when I was about ten," Ruby said, threading a long lock of hair through her fingers; it curled beautifully at the end, soft against her skin. "It still gets really rich highlights from the sun, though, even if it doesn't turn white like sand."

"I love those photos of you," her dad smiled fondly, glancing at her, "when we spent a few weeks at Cape Cod with the McGowan boys, d'you remember?"

"You had to come and haul me out of the sea 'cause I didn't want to go home," Ruby smiled. "I still have that beautiful sand-dollar I found."

"You kept it all these years?" her dad smiled.

"I keep everything," Ruby said softly. The Lieutenant Commander never saved _anything_; mostly, Ruby believed because she had nothing to be sentimental over. Well, except Ruby, of course, but apparently she didn't count. But everywhere Ruby went, she kept mementos and things. "I can actually show you all my adventures, because I document _everything_."

"Really?" her dad smiled.

"Yeah. I try to write something every day," Ruby smiled. "Kind of a scrapbook-journal sort of deal, you know? I put in photographs and pictures I've drawn, and things like ticket-stubs, and, just random shit I pick up on my travels."

"That sounds like a great habit," her dad said supportively.

"Well, I'd already started collecting stuff, you know, from back when I lived with the McGowans," Ruby shrugged. "When I went to live with Gramity, there was this amazing scrapbooking store, and I helped her arrange all _her_ photographs, and she wrote down all these stories from when she was a kid that I never knew about her. You know, pictures of old boyfriends and the stories behind dresses she wore in pictures, dresses _her_ grandmother had sewn for her," Ruby said, smiling.

"I should get Mom to write some things down," her dad said thoughtfully.

"It was really cool to learn about Gramity when she was—well, the same age I am now," Ruby grinned. "You know, when she was a nurse in Singapore and Malaya, she had all her clothes handmade, with matching heels and everything. She was engaged to a Maori, did you know? But he shot himself when he found out he had cancer. They didn't have the same treatments available back then. And there's a photo of her sitting between two Ghurkha warriors: I think she'd probably have been the scarier of the three! I couldn't believe Gramity actually went to Woodstock. That's awesome. And her friend who lives in the Caribbean is amazing. Shall I tell you about the rum-shop?"

"Oh dear," her dad chuckled.

"You know how Gramity used to smoke, right?" Ruby grinned; she couldn't stop laughing at the memory. "We were sitting in this rum-shop, and Gramity was chatting away and smoking this, uh, _cigarette_ one of the guys had given her—she goes, '_I'm sure there's something funny in this cigarette_'." Her dad laughed. "I said, 'Really, Gramity? Lemme have a look-see'."

"You got high with your grandmother?" Her dad _roared_ with laughter.

"Yeah. Gramity was so much fun," Ruby said, smiling softly. She missed Gramity—she hadn't been a _grandmother_ to Ruby; more like her best-friend, and her big-sister combined. She'd taught Ruby how to put on her face—Gramity had always looked really pretty—and she suspected Gramity had known about Jake. About her having sex with Jake, that was. "And she taught me a valuable life-lesson that afternoon. Always get stoned _before_ you drink—never the other way around. _And_ that when you die, have a week-long Caribbean wake, not one of those dreary funerals everybody sits weeping at."

"Is that what you did for Gramity?" her dad asked.

"Not for lack of the Lieutenant Commander wanting it to be just a plain old weepy funeral, trust me. Nana Freya and I organised the wake," Ruby said, smiling softly. "All of Gramity's favourite things. Cocktails, and really lively music—60s pop and rock, and reggae. We sent her off to Hendrix's 'Foxy Lady'! It made everyone laugh. Everyone wrote down their favourite memory with Gramity, and put it in a book for me."

"For you?" her dad said.

"Well, wouldn't do them any good giving it to the Lieutenant Commander; she'd have just tossed it out the next time she got transferred," Ruby said sourly. "She tosses everything out. It was me and Nana Freya who stopped her just dumping all Gramity's things at the local charity-shop." That had made Ruby _very_ angry; and she and Nana Freya had gone out of their way to organise Gramity's things, into the stuff that _could_ be tossed out, and the things they knew she had wanted Ruby to have. Because Gramity had known her daughter well; she hadn't left the Lieutenant Commander anything that could have sentimental or monetary value. "Guess that's why I'm so sentimental. Don't wanna be anything like _her_. Just like Gramity said the Lieutenant Commander is the way she is, because she doesn't want to be like Gramity. I just think she's a heartless bitch."

"She's your mother," her dad said softly.

"Nah," Ruby shook her head easily. "_Regina_ is the woman I think of when I think the word 'mother'." She peeked out of the window, smiling, as the scenery turned to country, more than town, a seamless segue from Main Street to the woods-shrouded cul-de-sacs and sprawling neighbourhoods hidden by creeks and woods and lovely small lakes. "The leaves are already turning!" She couldn't wait until the trees would turn that vivid fuchsia she remembered and loved so much. "I can't wait for _autumn_. Gloves, _tights_, snuggling under blankets. Hot chocolates."

"There's nothing like fall in New England," her dad smiled.

"I'll have to buy a _coat_," Ruby grimaced, wide-eyed. She hadn't had to think about _weather_ for years; she had always lived in sunny, humid places. She just woke up, showered, and bunged on whatever was clean and headed out the door, because she knew she would be walking out into perpetual sunshine. "So, just how far from the McGowans do you live?"

"About a quarter of a mile," her dad smiled. "Regina was the one who told me about the house being up for sale, so I nabbed it. You've got the creek and the woods between our two neighbourhoods."

"Is your house like theirs? A big old farmhouse-style place?" Ruby asked.

"Not exactly like it, but it was built around the same time, so it's got some character," Dad said. "The property has a few acres of land to it, most of which is just natural woodland, but the previous owners put in a pool and a hot-tub—and I had a huge vegetable-patch this summer." Ruby laughed, and she quickly recognised the houses they passed by.

This part of town was where the outlying, older homes had belonged to huge families who had needed space to raise their children, and had raised their own vegetables and chickens once upon a time, with a lot of land and the houses sheltered by woodland, a lot of the time with a river gurgling on one side of the property; the McGowans had a creek running along the bottom of their back-yard, and you had to go over a little hump-backed redbrick bridge over the creek to get to their street. The house was only visible in flashes of paintwork, until you pulled into the property, which had no real driveway but two dirt-tracks where cars continuously pulled in and out, leading up to the barn-conversion garage connected to the farmhouse-style home.

Most of the homes here were large, beautiful, with the kind of personality only the East Coast of America could boast, because they were so much older than any other parts of the country. The properties were large, natural, shrouded by woodland and so close to the sea, Ruby could smell the brine in the breeze.

"This is it," her dad smiled, leaning forward in his seat as he indicated and pulled off to the left, taking a previously-unnoticeable gap in the copious ochre-tinged trees, and Ruby barely noticed the little red-flagged mailbox hidden in blackberry bushes before the Mercedes pulled into the property between two great horse-chestnuts and a sprawling oak perfect for climbing.

"_Wow_," Ruby blurted, staring. The property opened up—and beautifully. Trees lined every edge of the property, and by the thinning nature of the trees along the right-hand border, Ruby was sure this was where the river gurgled past; a great lawn swept up to an enormous house. It was, as her dad had said, similar to the McGowans' in age, but not design; it was a huge old Victorian with a porch, greenhouse and, far beyond the actual house, a small shed bleached of colour. The house had a tower, with a sort of widow's walk, and there were at least three chimneys. Bay-windows and little portholes glowed, reflecting the sun; there was a large wicker sofa on the porch, surrounded by plants. The lower-half of the first-floor walls were stonework, the rest of the house painted in rich, warm tones of sage-green and golden-beige, with climbing, flowering plants all over it, the roses of the heart of summer just gone past their prime. The garage was newer, set side-on, facing the side of the house, and the dirt road wound to it. It had just the right aura of neglect to be called character, and Ruby loved it instantly.

"Like it?" her dad asked, smiling. Ruby grinned.

"I love it," she said honestly, gazing out of the window to keep her eyes on the house.

The polished front-door opened, and Ruby sat up a little straighter, frowning, as a woman dashed out of the house.

"Um…who's that?"

* * *

><p><strong>A.N.<strong>: Didn't intend for this chapter to be _quite_ so long, but Ruby just started talking and I couldn't stop typing! She's very incessant.


	3. Chapter 3

**A.N.**: Tada! Another chapter.

* * *

><p><strong>All Quiet on the East Coast<strong>

_03_

* * *

><p>The woman was grinning excitedly, her cornflower-blue eyes bright with anticipation; she had very long, naturally-blonde hair the colour of sun-ripened wheat, and looked as young as her father, or maybe younger by a few years. Dressed in relaxed jeans and a pretty, beaded sweater, she was also barefoot, and Ruby could see her toenails were painted a vivid sunflower-yellow, even if her fingernails were neatly French-manicured, playfulness contrasting elegance.<p>

Ruby glanced at her dad, her eyebrow quirked. "She's not your live-in housekeeper, is she."

"No," her dad said, looking a little contrite as he glanced at Ruby, pulling the car to a stop in front of the garage. "Tami is actually, um…well, we're getting married."

Ruby gaped. Her dad was getting _married_. She turned to stare at the woman. Her dad's _fiancée_.

"Well, she is hot," Ruby acquiesced, eyeing the woman up. She looked to be in her early thirties, thirty-five at oldest. She glanced at her dad, shrugging. "I'd do her." Her dad laughed, but he caught her eye, looking like he wanted to say something. "What?" He smiled.

"Nothing," he chuckled softly, tugging his keys from the ignition. As soon as Ruby opened the door, humidity slammed into her like a freight-train. _Tami_._ His fiancée. My dad's getting married. There's going to be a _marriage, she thought, stunned.

It had never occurred to Ruby that her dad was anything other than _her dad_. He was this woman, Tami's fiancé. Soon to be her _husband_. They were already living together. How long had they _been _together? Why had Nana Freya never mentioned the fact that her dad was in a serious relationship with someone? It had only been…twenty months ago that she'd seen Nana Freya.

Well, truth be told, she and Nana Freya hadn't talked much about Ruby's dad beyond him living in California. Nana Freya had wanted to hear about Ruby, and Ruby had been upset over Gramity.

_Married_, she thought again, shaking her head. She hadn't expected that—but then she couldn't exactly say she'd expected her father to stay single for the rest of his life. She hadn't really thought about it, truthfully.

_Married. She'll be my…stepmother_, Ruby thought, stunned anew. Aside from Regina, she'd never truly had a _mother_. _Well, Rube, this Tami chick can't be any worse than the Lieutenant Commander. That's for damn sure…Deep breath, Rube. Things can only get better. Anyway, she looks nice_.

Ruby clambered out of the car, quick enough to see the searing kiss her dad and this Tami lady shared, _gazing_ into each other's eyes, and her chest seized slightly as she watched, head canted to the side. He looked at her like she was heaven and earth—and she looked at him like he was…everything. Ruby had never been in love—not the soul-deep, can't-live-without-him love that so many novels and movies romanticised—but she could recognise it, if only because she longed for it so dearly. And these two people loved each other. With a kiss to her temple, Ruby's dad slipped an arm around his fiancée's waist, and the woman, Tami, turned her cornflower-blue eyes on Ruby, a beautiful smile emanating from seemingly beneath her skin, radiating joy and warmth.

Her eyes widened subtly as Ruby stood up straight, tugging on the strap of her tiny burgundy crumpled-silk camisole where it had fallen down her arm. The camisole revealed a good few inches of her flat tummy, and the dark colour concealed the fact that she wore no bra. The broken-in jeans she had stolen from Garrett sat comfortably, low on her slim hips, her battered biker boots peeking out from the scuffed hems. But it wasn't her clothes that kept Tami's attention; it was Ruby's very noticeable _tallness_. Ruby strode around the car, shutting the door quietly, and glanced from her dad to the woman.

"Ruby, this is Tami Porter," her dad said, smiling warmly at the woman. "Tami, this is my _little_ girl, Ruby." Tami chuckled softly, as Ruby grinned, and she broke away from Ruby's dad to beam and extend her arms for a hug. She was shorter than Ruby, and she gripped Ruby in the kind of hug Ruby only remembered from Gramity and Regina. A _mother's_ hug.

"I am so happy we get to have you in our family!" she beamed at Ruby, examining Ruby from arm's reach, gazing into her face with a sunny smile. "My god, Matthew, she's all you!" she declared happily, turning a warm smile onto Ruby's dad. She beamed at Ruby, but her expression turned almost shrewd; she laughed. "Your daddy didn't tell you about me, huh?"

"Um…not 'til I saw you come out of the house," Ruby admitted, chuckling softly; Tami chuckled knowingly.

"You had a lot to catch up on, huh," she smiled. "Your dad says you haven't seen each other in ten years."

"That's right," Ruby nodded.

"Well, we've got all the time in the world to get to know each other now," Tami smiled. "_All_ of us. I've had Freya and Regina telling me _all_ about you."

"Oh, god!" Ruby grimaced. "It's probably all true," she added, glancing at Tami, who laughed at her expression.

"I hope so!" Tami chuckled. "You sound like _quite_ a character."

"That, she gets from her grandmothers," her dad spoke up, and Ruby grinned hugely.

"Yeah, but I get my addiction to motorcycles from you," she pointed out. "And reading."

"Oh, no, we don't have another bibliophile?" Tami grimaced comically. "The library's already creaking under the weight!"

"You have a library?" Ruby asked, eyebrows raised.

"As good as," Tami chuckled, glancing at Ruby's dad. "He's filled the study to bursting. With records, too."

"Well, that's respectable," Ruby grinned.

"I guess some of those boxes that arrived for you are filled with books, too?" Tami smiled warmly.

"My stuff's already here?" Ruby grinned.

"Yeah, it arrived just a couple of days ago," Tami smiled. "They're all upstairs in your room. Speaking of, why don't we get all your stuff inside, and you can take a load off. Matthew, d'you want iced tea, lemonade or beer?"

"I'm breathing, aren't I?" Ruby's dad grinned back, as he unlocked the trunk of his car.

"Beer it is," Tami smiled. "What about you, Ruby?"

"Chilled brewsky would be nice," Ruby said, eyes wide. Tami laughed, arching an eyebrow. "Okay, okay, iced tea would be nice."

"You don't mind mango black tea, do you?" Tami asked, as she took Ruby's artists' portfolio from Ruby's dad, as well as her laptop-bag.

"Sounds _good_," Ruby said honestly. "I like a lot of teas."

"I got it from the Farmer's Market," Tami said. "Regina told me you used to love going down there every week."

"Yeah!" Ruby grinned. "The kettle-corn and free samples."

"Anise loves it too," Tami said thoughtfully.

"Anise?" Ruby said, glancing at the woman as she tucked Ruby's skateboard under her arm.

"Oh, that's right. Matthew wouldn't have told you, if you didn't get round to talking about me," Tami smiled. "Anise is our daughter—well, _my_ daughter. She won't be your dad's for a little while yet, just like you'll be mine—if you want to be." Ruby suddenly realised what other people felt like listening to _her_ chatter on; a little bit blitzed. She worked through what Tami had said; she had a daughter? Anise. Who her dad was supposedly going to adopt when he married Tami?

"You want to adopt…_me_?" Ruby exclaimed, eyes wide. Tami shrugged, smiling.

"Only if you want to be," she said, shrugging again. She glanced at Ruby's dad. "We just really want you to stay with us, and be part of this family, officially, just in case. In fact, your daddy's been wanting to whisk you away to live with us for quite a while." Ruby glanced at her dad, who had his back turned as he grabbed hold of the handles of her leather duffel-bags.

"Really?"

"Course," her dad grunted, heaving her bags out of the trunk. He paused as he turned toward the porch, to kiss her cheek fondly. "Missed you." Ruby smiled softly as she bent to collect the last of her things, and as her dad approached the front-door, it slammed shut; Ruby raised her eyebrows as her dad kicked the door.

"Anise, come on, let me in!" he called.

"It's not finished yet!" a very young, sweet voice called through the door.

"Nisey!" her dad called, and Ruby glanced at Tami for explanation.

"Anise is five," she said, grinning. That was explanation enough! _Five_, Ruby thought. She loved little kids; her favourite memories were of the sprawling barbecues and water-fights with the young McGowan boys.

Where, in between having her daughter, divorcing her husband and moving in here had Tami and Ruby's dad had _time_ to even meet? She glanced at her dad as he leaned against the wall next to the door, yawning, waiting obediently for the little disembodied voice to proclaim whatever she was working on 'finished'.

"So, how did you two, um…?" Ruby said. Usually she didn't have any problem saying what she meant, but she didn't really know how to go about this situation.

"Meet?" Tami smiled. "Well, I guess that story starts with Anise. Anise's father and I had divorced, and I'd met your dad, before I realised Anise was on the way. Matthew's the only daddy Anise has ever known. Your dad and I saw each other at the same farmer's market for weeks—until we finally stopped to talk."

"Paging thunderbolt-city, huh?" Ruby grinned.

"Sort of. We argued over who should have the last of the artichokes," Tami chuckled. "I was having cravings for artichokes. Your dad suggested I mix them with jalapenos and cream-cheese, and eat the dip with roasted pitas."

"And the rest, as they say, is history," Ruby's dad smiled. "Anise, can we come in yet?" He almost fell over the threshold as the front-door burst open.

A little girl, barely above two feet tall, stood in a pair of clear, silver-glitter jelly sandals, the kind Ruby used to wear at the same age, a spangled tutu, a yellow polka-dot bikini-top and purple-lens, pink-framed goggles, her sugary-blonde hair pulled into a flyaway ponytail ending in one, perfect natural ringlet that swished and swung over her tiny shoulders. Big hazel eyes glowed, as tiny pearly teeth flashed in an impish, utterly endearing grin: little Anise was _adorable_. And she was grinning up at Ruby as if she was made of diamonds and candy. She had that nut-brown summer tan and the sun-streaked locks only a child could gain, and her tiny nose was still overly tanned where it had previously burned; she held out a tiny little hand and latched on to the strap of Ruby's camera-bag, leading Ruby into the house without even introducing herself or letting Ruby drop her luggage.

Through the warm foyer—littered as comfortable _family_ homes were with the toys and clothes and knickknacks of children that had obviously been collected by Anise—Ruby barely got a glance at the staircase winding up to an open mezzanine balcony, and she was tugged through an arched entrance to a very wide, open kitchen overlooking a glittering pool that sent vibrant sparkles across the walls of the living-area to the right: wide French doors were open onto the beautiful patio, which was wet with little Anise-sized footprints, and spread with vibrant beach-towels, pool-toys and furniture.

But it was the wide, amazingly beautiful kitchen that held Ruby's notice, if only because the ends of a long string had been taped to the walls, from one end of the huge Viking stove hood to the farthest end of the enormous window overlooking the pool, vegetable-patch and immediate garden, bearing a banner. The banner looked homemade, evidently drawn by Anise herself; each letter had the vivid colourfulness and inaccuracy of a child, and someone seemed to have drawn out the letters for '_Welcome Home Ruby_' in faint pencil before she had coloured them in. A big vase of flowers Ruby suspected had been plucked from the wildflower-speckled lawn and woods was set up on the island, with a handmade card Ruby suspected Anise had made also, next to a jug of something frosty-orange, sweating from the amount of ice, and a peachy-orange flower arranged on it prettily, with several bowls of snacks and treats set up.

"_Surprise_!" Anise cooed excitedly. As she whirled around, her ponytail swinging, Ruby pretended to pop her eyes and gape—the reaction Anise anticipated, she knew instinctively from her time with the youngest McGowan boys.

"For _me_?" she grinned earnestly, her eyes travelling over the carefully hand-coloured letters on the banner, and the messy collection of treats undoubtedly poured out by Anise herself.

"Yup!" Anise blurted excitedly, grinning. "Daddy told me all your favourite things when you were the same age as me—see!"

Ruby beamed. "Thank you!" She hadn't been expecting this at _all_.

She was not only gaining a stepmother—a _mother_?—but she was getting a baby sister thrown into the deal? And her daddy too?

"You're welcome," Anise said, with great dignity, turning to one of the little dishes and grabbing a ruby-red tiny strawberry for herself. "D'you know what else, you're going to be my assistant-bridesmaid."

This little girl was so precocious—she was _too_ precious! Ruby glanced up at Tami and her dad, who were both chuckling, having divested themselves of Ruby's things in the hall.

"Is that true? You want me to be a maid's-bride?" Ruby asked, smiling impishly, and her dad chuckled. Ruby had been a "maid's-bride" only once before, when she was two years old. She had been the flower-girl for one of Regina McGowan's very close friends; and apparently, Ruby hadn't worn anything but her bridesmaid dress for close to three months. She'd had a much-coveted doll, Jasmine, whom the bride had made an exact copy of Ruby's dress for as a gift: Jasmine had gone missing when Ruby had lived with the McGowans, after a spate of doll-nappings in the neighbourhood.

"We were hoping," Tami smiled.

"Ruby," Anise said thoughtfully, turning to frown up at Ruby's face. "How is it you're so great big?" Ruby laughed, as her dad and Tami chuckled.

"I ate too much of that cake they give Alice when she goes to Wonderland," Ruby said, pretending to be put out. Anise's eyes widened.

"Daddy said _you_ used to have a white rabbit," Anise said, canting her head to the side as she gazed up at Ruby. It was very odd to hear some other little call _her _father 'daddy'.

"Yep, I did. His name was Pookie," Ruby smiled.

"Really? We had a dog in California, before he went to Devon. His name was, um, Pip," Anise said.

"Really? After _Great_ _Expectations_?"

"No; he used to spit out watermelon seeds," Anise said, focusing on her strawberry before popping it into her mouth, while Ruby's dad and Tami laughed.

Tami made her way idly around the kitchen, cleaning up mess made by Anise, bringing out a bottle of beer for Ruby's dad, pouring glasses of ice-tea for everyone. Observing, it was evident that Anise adored Ruby's father; Anise was a chatterbox, and these three were completely at ease with each other, a young couple with one young daughter, utterly relaxed about welcoming an older one into their home. They were _nice_, good-natured, and so relaxed that it felt natural to sit at the island and sip iced mango black-tea, listening to Anise chatter away, telling Ruby all about her favourite things; that her friend Caleb had made her fall over while she was learning to ride her bike; how she loved the movie _Tangled_ and was going to marry Flynn Rider; and she asked Ruby if she liked having her nails painted; and whether she liked camping or brought any toys or "_old_ Disney movies, because you're old, too" and if she liked playing on the _Wii_; she showed Ruby _her_ iPod—actually her mother's—a new pink iPod Nano that matched Ruby's exactly; pulling it out of her pocket, Anise saw it and grinned widely, declaring they were twins. Anise measured her honey-gold tan against Ruby's very dark olive one, asking Ruby how she got her skin so deeply tanned.

"Oh, I drank too much hot-chocolate," Ruby said, and Anise's eyes popped.

"Do you like milkshakes?"

"I do."

"Do you wear _bras_?"

"Sometimes."

"Your buppies aren't as big as Mommy's."

"No," Ruby chuckled. She had small breasts, but if she did say so herself—and she had backup evidence from the testimonies her prior boys-who-were-friends—they were very beautiful ones.

"Do you like boys?" Anise asked, eyes intent on her homemade peach cone popsicle as she licked it.

"_Lots_," Ruby grinned, licking her own _cherry_ cone popsicle—her _favourite_: Tami had learned from Regina that these were her favourite childhood treat, and had been given the recipe in preparation for Ruby's arrival. "Do you like boys?"

"They're alright," Anise shrugged.

"Why don't you tell Ruby about your boyfriend?" Tami spoke up; her eyes twinkled as she gazed at her little daughter. Ruby raised her eyebrows at Anise.

"You have a boyfriend? And I don't. There is _no_ justice in this world," Ruby said, shaking her head. Tami chuckled, her eyes glittering.

"Caleb's only my boyfriend _sometimes_," Anise said, clambering up onto her knees on her bar-stool, giving her mother an indignant glance. "Just when he's got a Fudge Bar and I want it, and when we go swimming. Or I might drown. Caleb's a good swimmer."

"So you have a boyfriend for self-preservation," Ruby nodded. "That's smart."

"Yup," Anise agreed easily.

"So what's this Caleb stud's last name?" Ruby asked.

"McGowan," Anise sighed dreamily. "He's in my class at _school_."

"Caleb McGowan?" Ruby grinned, glancing up at her dad before looking back at Anise, who was near cross-eyed as she gazed at her melting popsicle. "Caleb's big enough for school now?"

"Caleb's not as old as me," Anise said, matter-of-factly. "We're going to be in _first grade_."

"Wow," Ruby said, sounding as impressed as evidently Anise thought she should sound; Anise nodded sombrely.

"We start in _two weeks_," Anise beamed hugely. "Last year I was in kindergarten with Caleb. He knows how to play _Mario_ _Kart_."

"I'll bet he does," Ruby smiled, remembering that, in the McGowan house, video-games were considered gifts directly from the hands of gods. She glanced up at her dad. "Speaking of McGowans—did you tell Regina I was coming to live here?"

"Of course," Dad grinned hugely. "We both thought it'd be more entertaining if we _didn't_ tell the boys, though."

"_YES_!" Ruby exclaimed, clapping her hands and laughing evilly. "I will set my alarm _early_!"

"Maybe it would be kinder to warn them," Dad said thoughtfully; Ruby pouted, appalled that she'd lose the opportunity to shock the hell out of Finn. "I was joking!"

"Do _you_ know Caleb?" Anise asked, glancing up at Ruby.

"I've known him since he was knee-high to a cricket's walking-stick," Ruby said, and Anise's fair eyebrows rose curiously. "He was a baby when I lived with the McGowans."

"You _lived_ with them?" Anise smiled. "Like, you were their sister too?"

"Yeah, just like that," Ruby grinned.

"Which boy do you like?" Anise asked innocently.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to marry Finn," Anise said, sighing wistfully as she licked her popsicle.

"Oh, is that so?" Ruby chuckled. "You're going from one brother to another? You can't do that—they'll have you up before Jerry Springer!" As Tami laughed, Anise shot Ruby a perplexed look. She grinned back. "Finn was my best-friend in the whole world."

"He always lets me play when I go over to see with Caleb," Anise smiled happily. "All different games. Finn's going to be an _artist_."

"Is he, then?" Ruby smiled.

"Yep. He taught me how to paint _elephants_," Anise beamed.

"Did he?" Ruby grinned at her excited fidgeting.

"Yes! I'll show you!" Anise blurted, dropping her popsicle on the counter to clamber off her stool and rush off in a whirl of one long, swinging ringlet and a sparkling tutu. Ruby chuckled as she watched the little girl bound off, disappearing upstairs, by the sounds of her puffing steps and the soft clatter of toys dislodged on the stairs.

"She's got energy," Ruby remarked, grinning at her dad and Tami.

"She's ten percent hair, ninety percent popsicles," Tami laughed warmly.

"Does she remind you of anyone, Rube?" her dad asked, and Ruby jutted up her chin, sipping her iced-tea.

"Not at all," she said, and her dad laughed: Anise seemed _just_ like Ruby at the same age. Boundless energy and enthusiasm. "She seems really, um, excited…that I'm here."

"Oh, she was over the moon when we told her she might have an older sister coming to live with her," her dad said, grinning.

"Yeah, and it staved off us having to explain to her where babies come from," Tami grimaced comically. "I don't think I'm ready to have the stork-talk with her just yet."

"Well, if she's hanging out with the McGowan boys, forewarned is forearmed," Ruby chuckled, and Tami winked as her dad sort of spluttered. Anise came racing back into the kitchen, bearing a slightly crumpled-looking sheet of purple card, on the back of which was scrawled her name with a gold star, and on the front of which, Ruby saw as Anise set it down with a flourish, was a display of cut-out photographs of elephants, as well as several little paintings of them. One had been evidently done by someone older, while the others were a child's imitation of what they perceived. There were little notes written painstakingly in a child's handwriting, and Ruby smiled as she picked up the project, as Anise chattered away about what she had learned about elephants, and why her teacher had given her a gold star when Caleb hadn't received one, which was why he hadn't talked to her for three days, until she got _Fruit Gushers_ for her Friday lunch treat, and he "said he would eat the green ones, because he knows I don't like them."

"Very chivalrous of him," Ruby nodded solemnly, as Anise traced the elephant Finn had painted with her fingertip.

"Yeah," Anise sighed wistfully. "So now he's my best-friend again. And we're on the same T-ball team. Caleb's daddy coaches us."

"John's cool, huh," Ruby smiled.

"He's a babe," Anise smiled impishly, and Ruby burst out laughing. Anise was _exactly_ like Ruby at the same age; she'd always had a soft spot for the oldest McGowan 'boy'. Especially when he had carried her in his arms into the hospital like a chivalrous knight, Ruby a damsel in distress after his eldest son had cracked her head open with a frying-pan.

"So, are you getting hungry, Ruby?" Tami asked. "We were thinking maybe we could go out to eat, to celebrate. Your pick."

"My pick?" Ruby grinned. "Um…" She glanced at Anise, smiling. "What do you think, Anise?"

"Duck rolls!" Anise blurted, glancing at Ruby's dad. "Can we have Thai food?" Anise glanced at Ruby shrewdly. "You do _like_ Thai food, don't you?"

"Ruby's _been _to Thailand," Dad said, and Anise's eyes popped.

"_Really_?"

"Really," Ruby smiled. "And Thai food is one of my favourites."

"Yes!" Anise beamed, clapping her hands.

"I guess that's settled, then," Tami chuckled. "Hey, little star, why don't you go and show Ruby her bedroom?"

"Okay!" Anise said brightly, hopping down from her stool; Ruby grabbed the elephant poster Anise had been so proud to show her, and Anise smiled as she took it back, and latched on to the loose leg of Ruby's jeans, tugging her toward the kitchen stairs. "Your room is next to mine! Yours is bigger than my bedroom, because you're older. Do you want to see _my_ room?—I'll show you later—and we get to share a bathroom. Do you wear makeup? Daddy gave me a new lip-gloss yesterday. It tastes like blackberries and oranges."

"That was nice of him," Ruby said, watching Anise. It was disconcerting to hear Anise call _her_ father 'daddy', yet she couldn't find it in herself to dislike this little girl for it—or for her dad giving her lip-glosses to make her feel grown-up.

"Daddy's always surprising us with treats," Anise said happily, panting slightly as she climbed the stairs, evading one landing to continue up; everywhere around her, things were bright, neutral yet somehow colourful, things strewn around like she knew only the home of a small child could be. A sort of play-area opened up when Anise tugged Ruby onto the next landing; there was a low round table with a doll's house nestled neatly on it, and bean-bags and poufs, a little table set with tea, and collections of toys and dolls neatly arranged, a few low bookcases filled with fairytales and children's stories and arranged with rows of _Sylvanian_ _Families_ animals.

_Just like my old playroom_, Ruby thought, remembering back to the days before her dad had left, when he used to curl up in that great rocking-chair she now had in her room at all times, reading to her while she curled up in her blanket. Anise panted on, tugging Ruby to a particular door. "Last week he gave me an Asian pear. And he bought Mommy kumquats. They're funny, aren't they? Kumquats. It's a funny word."

"They taste nice," Ruby smiled, as Anise fumbled with the door-knob and tugged her over the threshold.

A huge, airy room opened up, with walls half-panelled, painted very pale almond-beige, the natural wood floor polished and covered by a soft, shaggy sage-green rug. The colour palette was beautiful; a lot of soft neutral whites and golden-beiges; but added in were splashes of colour: almond; lilac and pale periwinkle; pale bluebell; sea-green; baby-pink and tiny splashes of sunflower yellow. The intricately-panelled doors to the closet were white, with almond and pale sea-green painted into the design, with tiny clusters of forget-me-nots in periwinkle: alternate panels on the walls featured dainty, swirling garland patterns of tiny sage-green leaves and delicate roses: the recovered-antique desk was painted white, with tiny details on the legs and the little drawers and cubby-holes of almond and pink feathers: the seat of the deep bay-window (beneath the custom-made almond-beige cushion) was painted sage-green, with a pattern of tiny sunflowers and buttercups.

There were two normal windows, push-up-open ones she was unnaturally skilled at jimmying open from the outside, and both of these were decorated with rolling blinds of pale-green fabric printed with sprays of lily-of-the-valley. The third window was huge, a deep bay-window with a thickly-cushioned seat, a ledge running around the edge of the window for photographs and trinkets; there were the same lily-of-the-valley blinds, as well as soft, translucent almond sheers, and heavier black-out curtains of periwinkle-green printed with the tiniest of white polka-dots. A fourth window was actually a narrow glass door with access onto a small balcony, which in turn, with an easy climb down to the natural-fenced vegetable-patch, gave easy access out of the house. This window-door featured a very long blind, and one of the periwinkle-green curtains.

The bed was a beautiful double-daybed set lengthwise against the wall, with very high foot- and headboards that had been upholstered with very beautiful shimmering almond-coloured silk fabric embroidered all over with sprays of flowers in pinks, lilacs, bluebell-blue and tiny sage-green flowers. The bedding was Ruby's own—softest white cotton printed with horizontal stripes of faded baby-blue and white, interspersed with garlands of olive-green leaves and tiny pink flowers. Some of her hand-crocheted cream, golden-beige and rose-pink cushions were set out prettily, and someone had found what looked like a homemade Moroccan-inspired table, and painted it soft baby-pink and white; it stood beside the bed with a little translucent lamp, and beyond the bed, Ruby saw her own dark, low, mother-of-pearl inlaid dresser stood neatly tucked against the wall, with a small corner shelving unit painted the same pale-almond as the walls, empty for her to fill with her things.

Cardboard boxes wrapped in 'FRAGILE' tape were piled neatly in the centre of the room beneath a pretty chandelier-lamp, and Ruby's glossy pink trunk stood beside the worn rocking-chair she loved. A very large white antique-framed corkboard rested against one of the boxes, and Anise went straight to it, touching the things Ruby had pinned and tacked in place on it, and around the frame: she had refused to take everything off it to put it in the removal-van. Several boxes stood open as they had been when Ruby had packed them into the van, featuring rolls of glossy posters, huge lever-arch folders filled with photograph negatives, her knitting-bag and the last of her books.

"Do you like it?" Anise asked, wide-eyed, as she grimaced guiltily and caught the little heart-shaped magnetised clip she had dislodged from the corkboard; it had the words '_Forget Me Not_' printed on it in duck-egg blue, a tiny parting-gift from one of her only female friends, in Pearl Harbour, with whom Ruby had shared a lot of happy memories immortalised in film. Anise set the heart clip back on the board, huffing a sigh and shifting a guilty smile at Ruby.

"I do," Ruby smiled back, awed by how beautiful and _personal_ this room was. Though Ruby's things hadn't been rummaged through and arranged (she would have had to do it all over again herself, to get things arranged the right way) the bed had been made with her things, and _love_ soaked every inch of this room: she saw it in the way the details were laboriously painted on the panelling, the closet doors, the window-seat and the desk. "It's a very pretty room."

"Mommy did it," Anise said proudly. "But _I _helped. And Daddy built the bed-frame and that little table."

"Did he?" Ruby asked, surprised and strangely thrilled.

"Mm-hmm," Anise smiled, her eyes following her fingertips as they sifted over the tiny, colourful crochet-flowers bunting Ruby had pinned around the edge of the corkboard with a string of colourful Christmas lights, and a handful of peacock plumes pinned with a deep crimson stardust dahlia clip centred with a red pearl—a gift from Stacy when he had nominated her as homecoming-queen and dragged her to the dance. His idea of a sick, sick joke. "Do you want me to help you unpack?"

"Well, do we have time to unpack before we go and eat?" Ruby asked, glancing back at the door, and jumping; Tami had just walked into the room. She beamed at Ruby, but her gaze turned uncertain as she glanced around the room.

"Do you like it?" she asked earnestly, looking a little shy about Ruby's reaction. Well, or perhaps just shy about Ruby: she was a six-foot sixteen-year-old, the estranged daughter of her fiancé.

"It's _amazing_," Ruby said honestly. "Anise says you did it all?" Tami beamed at Ruby's reaction; and she nodded. She eyed the boxes and things still not unpacked in the centre of the room.

"I didn't want to unpack everything, in case you didn't want us rummaging," she said, rubbing her hands together, "but the closet's empty, for you. There should be some fresh towels in there for you, too, as well as your spare bedding."

"Thank you," Ruby smiled.

"Mommy, can we help Ruby unpack?" Anise asked, bending at the hips to peer at the photographs pinned and tucked on the corkboard amongst odd things Ruby had picked up: beads and strings of little shells; the little hooks that usually held some of her necklaces; the tiny natural-wood surfboard etched with her 'Hawaiian' name, _Lupe_, and plumeria—the same flowers she had a ceramic spray of attached to the top-left-hand corner of the corkboard, in deep, vivid fuchsia, the same colour the sky was in her favourite photograph of her and Stacy together in a hammock on the beach at sunset.

"Actually, I was just coming up to say we should all get washed up," Tami said, dusting her hands off. "We're gonna head out for dinner in a minute."

"Oh boy!" Anise gasped excitedly, bounding off.

"I guess I'll let you settle in for a few minutes," Tami chuckled, watching her daughter disappear; she glanced at Ruby and smiled. "I'm real glad you came to live with us, Ruby."

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><p><strong>A.N.<strong>: You'll see the boys in two chapters' time, promise! Please review.


	4. Chapter 4

**A.N.**: Because I want to share with Garrett Hedlund the process of making his babies, I imagine Sean to look like him: He's _delicious_. And he can pull off the biker attitude. Ruby…is a combination of inspirations; the Victoria's Secret Angels Bianca Balti (especially her eyes), and a combination of my own and Lizzie Jagger's hair.

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><p><strong>All Quiet on the East Coast<strong>

_04_

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><p>After spending the majority of her time alone or in varying degrees of nudity with a boy, Ruby's evening with her father and new soon-to-be <em>stepmother<em> and _stepsister_ was probably about the most enjoyable family-experience she'd had in…well, _ever_. They had gone to what had once been Ruby's favourite Thai restaurant, even without her dad or Tami having known that: they shared several entrées, and couldn't stop laughing; Anise was as incorrigible a flirt as Ruby had been at the same age—something her dad had been quick to point out, and which Ruby had countered with the fact that actually, she _still_ _was_—and chatted up the waiters quite happily, not noticing how much Dad was shaking in his seat from suppressed laughter.

Ruby and Anise had doodled on the paper tablecloth (the waiter had brought over crayons for such a purpose, but Ruby had revealed her _Paperchase_ CD-case of tiny coloured pencils, over which Anise had fallen into raptures) and played tic-tac-toe, with Ruby teaching Anise how to draw a sunflower wearing pink sunglasses; a rabbit with a huge granddad moustache and monocle; and a bear on a unicycle wearing a waistcoat and fez; a dragon eating a melting ice-cream; and a little girl with one long, blonde ringlet squaring off a baseball-tee; and another little girl in a green dress with a pet leopard wearing a big yellow bow around its neck, playing with pomegranates and emeralds like they were peewees and jacks. Anise had showed Ruby how to draw her namesake; star-anise: and how to draw baseballs, strawberries and a dark-haired girl blowing bubblegum bubbles, wearing a vibrantly-coloured dress.

Anise had told Ruby that her mother was very special and "_creative_"; that she made "the best jam in all of California". Ruby didn't point out they lived in Massachusetts now; but she was curious where they had lived previously, and they got into discussions about where Ruby had lived—discovering that her dad had lived in a town called Pleasanton, which was the town over from _Livermore_, where the iconic Altamont _Rolling Stones_ concert had taken place in '69—"Who's Rolling Stones?" Anise asked innocently.

"Who's—_Who's the Rolling Stones_?" Ruby blurted, wide-eyed, appalled. "My pet, the Rolling Stones are _gods_! They are positively the best band in the entire _world_! '_Who's Rolling Stones_?'!"

"You know who they are, little star," Dad had chuckled, eyes twinkling as he sipped his wine, smiling from Ruby to Anise. "They sing 'Let's Spend the Night Together'."

"_Oh_!" Anise grinned hugely. "Yes, I like them." Ruby raised a fluttering hand to her heart, sagging in her chair in mock-relief.

"Thank goodness," she whispered, as Anise sat up in her seat, eyebrows raised curiously. "I was worried I'd have to re-educate you!"

"There's no Hannah Montana or High School Musical in _our_ house," Tami said, decisively, and Ruby nodded sternly in agreement. She could definitely respect this woman—this _stunning_ woman who looked really hot in a dark-sapphire top, her hair loose and natural, laughing at her daughter and at Ruby's talent for tirelessly entertaining boisterous children. Ruby could tell why her dad fell for her. And she was nice; she had a sense of humour, and she treated her daughter like a best-friend as well as a daughter. Something Ruby had never experienced before.

Most of the time, when Ruby had seen children out in restaurants with their parents, they fidgeted or played video-games under the table, ignoring everyone else. Anise was a chatterbox; and precocious. She was also highly observant, and because of this, was rather _smart_. She told Ruby about her favourite television programmes—_Glee_ ranking up there with the 1995 BBC _Pride and Prejudice_, _Roseanne _and _Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals_, David Attenborough and _Sesame Street_—and her favourite movies: _Tangled_, _Sleeping Beauty_, _Fantasia_, _Land Before Time_, _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_, _Stardust_ and all the Harry Potters, _The Fellowship of the Ring_—"I'm going to marry Strider."

"I thought you were going to marry Finn McGowan," Ruby pointed out, as they drove back home.

"I will marry them both," Anise answered, in the lingering sunset, tucked up in a booster-seat and clutching her tiny _Cath_ _Kidston_ dinosaur backpack in her lap, from which several key-chains and a lip-gloss dangled (Anise had had Ruby carefully apply her lip-gloss for her after leaving the Thai restaurant), and which now contained the handful of Mario Star origami-stars Ruby had folded for her while they had waited for their food, as well as an origami giraffe; pelican; triceratops; a butterfly; a fortune-teller and the four little origami frogs they had all raced across the table, to Anise's delight.

"That's _illegal_," Tami laughed from the front.

"Hm. I will live in sin with them, then," Anise said decisively, fidgeting in her booster-seat. "Are we nearly home?"

"Nearly, little star," Dad said, smiling.

"Can Ruby read to me?" Anise asked.

"You'll have to ask Ruby if she wants to read to you," Tami said, smiling back at them. "She's had a long day. Ruby might be tired."

"Are you tired?" Anise asked concernedly, turning in her booster-seat to frown at Ruby.

"Not very," Ruby said honestly; having a good time, like she had had tonight, at the restaurant, always filled her with energy. It was strange to think that she wouldn't be returning to a cold, empty house.

"We're reading _Holes_," Anise said happily.

"That's a good book," Ruby said thoughtfully, recalled to memories of sixth-grade, when she'd had to do a book-report on _Holes_.

"Do you like to read?"

"I love to read," Ruby smiled.

"We should start a book-club," Anise said happily. "Mommy's in one with Aunt Regina."

"What book are you reading?" Ruby asked Tami.

"This month?" Tami replied, glancing back. "We're supposed to be reading _The Help_."

"You haven't read it?" Ruby guessed, smirking amusedly. Tami shrugged unabashedly, smiling, her eyes on her daughter.

"It's summer vacation," she chuckled softly.

"Enough said," Ruby said, glancing at Anise, who was peering covetously at the contents of her bag—which, aside from the origami collection, included a pink _DS_, a little coin-purse and a pair of pink polka-dot _Lolita_ sunglasses. "You should read it, though. _The Help_, I mean. It's _amazing_. And I don't mind telling you I feel an unadulterated connection with Mae Mobley."

"I guess I'll have to read it," Tami smiled.

"Yeah!" Ruby grinned. "You've got a live-in _au_ _pair_ now who'll keep this one entertained and free up your hands." She nodded at Anise, who smiled up at her.

"Careful!" Dad chuckled. "We might just hold you to that."

"I don't mind," Ruby smiled, reaching over to tuck a loose lock of Anise's hair behind her little, pierced ear. "You're good company, aren't you, pet."

"Yup," Anise replied without hesitation, and Ruby laughed.

Truth of the matter was, Ruby admitted to herself as Anise tugged her over the threshold, into the air-conditioned but still warm house, Ruby couldn't have wished for any situation as unexpectedly wonderful as this. She got to live with her dad—who not only had a great, rich life for himself, but also had an amazing fiancée who was so anti-everything Ruby's mother had stood for; they also had this wonderful, precocious little girl who Ruby _wouldn't_ mind being a nanny for.

Ruby was given a few moments' reprieve, as Anise scuttled upstairs to climb into her pyjamas: she reappeared with her ponytail even more tousled, and wearing little pink _Sleeping Beauty_ pyjamas.

"I'll help you unpack now," Anise declared, "until it's time for bed."

"Thank you," Ruby answered solemnly, and once again she found herself pulled upstairs by the five-year-old.

Anise was a curious one: and Ruby's dad followed her up, while Tami returned missed phone-calls. He handed Ruby a glass of iced-tea, and chuckled as he sat perched on the edge of the bed—before Ruby removed a small cardboard box from the rocking-chair, and he sank into it, fidgeting, finding the most comfortable spot, and relaxing with a luxurious sigh.

"Should we leave you two alone?" Ruby asked, and her dad chuckled.

"I've missed this rocking-chair," he sighed, his features relaxing utterly as he rocked the chair gently.

"It's my reading/knitting/crocheting/sewing/scrapbooking/negative-viewing chair," Ruby chuckled, and her dad laughed softly, meanwhile Anise had clambered to her knees, her tiny little feet folded beneath her bottom as she gazed, head tilted to one side, at Ruby's corkboard collage.

"You knit and crochet?" her dad smiled.

"Don't you remember? John McGowan's mother taught me when I was little," Ruby smiled. She _loved_ John McGowan's mother—when Ruby had lived with the McGowans, going out with Nana Diane was a treat: the only girl, even if not officially her son's daughter, Diane had treated Ruby like her only granddaughter: they would go for manicures; take scrapbooking classes together at Diane's favourite little craft store; watch sentimental black-and-white movies with Grace Kelly and Rita Hayworth and eat Snickerdoodle cookies and raspberry iced-tea while they knitted or crocheted; they had played Grandma-granddaughter Bunco, and Ruby had _always_ been thrilled to see Diane.

"That's right!" Dad smiled. "I'd forgotten about that!" As Ruby used her pocket-knife to slit the tape on one of the cardboard boxes, strategically chosen as the first to unpack because of the word '_blankets_' written on the side of the box, she upturned the contents onto the bed. Numerous large, thick blankets tumbled out, most of them fully-lined, usually featuring some form of crochet embellishment if not entirely knitted outright. Numerous afghans, some black with colour, some cream, some with four-petal diamond flowers, some with strip-style flowers, some with the flower in the design itself, and some fully lined and several not, spilled out, as well as other blankets she had knitted, or quilted: she and Gramity had gone through a phase of learning how to quilt, and Ruby's was a very intricate, detailed alphabet quilt in earthy, natural, warm colours that fit very well in this room.

"Apparently you didn't forget," her dad chuckled, and Ruby shook her head.

"No. It was perfect, actually," Ruby said, canting her head to one side as Anise rose to her feet to examine the blankets, unfolding them, examining the small, beautiful blanket Ruby particularly loved, cream-coloured, fully-lined, knitted with cable-knit and little bobbles, and featuring large, soft strip-style crochet roses. "You know, I even make money off making these."

"Really?" her dad raised his eyebrows interestedly.

"Yeah. Um…when I lived with Gramity, she suggested it," Ruby said, fingering one of the vividly-coloured four-petal flower afghans. "People love homemade things like this. Especially new mothers." Dad chuckled. Ruby frowned at her knitting-bag as she pulled it out of one of the open boxes. "I'll have to start knitting myself scarves and new _socks_! And gloves! And _cardigans_!"

"Where do you sell these?" her dad asked, examining one of the blankets.

"Over the internet," Ruby said, smiling softly. "Usually only baby-blankets, as they're smaller, not as expensive to post. But I have a blog I sell them from."

"Very cool," Dad grinned. "You should show Tami these; she loves this stuff. Did you show Mom?"

"Nana Freya?" Ruby smiled. "Yeah. She picked out the yarn for…these two." She indicated one blanket of rose-red and sage-green, and a frilly-edged white afghan that Ruby usually used to cover her legs in cooler weather. "I was supposed to send her photos when they were finished, but, um…I lost her address in one of the moves."

"Well, she still lives in Boston," Dad smiled. "So you can bet she'll be stuck to you like cow-muck in a field."

"Thank you for that charming comparison," Ruby chuckled, grinning.

"Did you make these?" Anise asked, and Ruby glanced down; the little one moved very quietly. She stood right at Ruby's toes, tracing her fingertip over the colourful borders of the four-petal diamond flowers of a pink-purple-aqua-green afghan with a decadently-warm partially-knitted lining of forest-green fleece.

"I did," Ruby smiled.

"Will you show me?" Anise asked, peering into Ruby's knitting-bag, which was built like a shaker-box, but with hinged wicker lids, fully-lined, and stuffed with her half-finished projects, just as a large blue wicker basket also was. One of the medium-sized boxes was stuffed tightly with different yarns.

"Course I can," Ruby smiled.

"Tomorrow, though," Dad said gently. "It's nearly your bedtime, Nisey."

"Alright," Anise sighed heavily, eyeing the blanket again. She scuttled over to the huge corkboard, which was at least five foot wide, three foot tall. She pointed to the string of brightly-coloured little crochet flowers. "Did you make them?"

"Yep."

"You can show me how to make _those_, please," Anise smiled. "_And_ you can show me how to make those organ stars."

"Origami," Ruby chuckled. "And, yes, of course I will." Anise smiled, then frowned, dimpling thoughtfully.

"Well, actually, tomorrow I've got ballet—_and_ I have T-ball practice. And a game!" she beamed. She blinked up at Ruby, ecstatic. "Will you _come_ to my game?"

"I certainly will," Ruby promised. "I'll even throw snow-cones at the umpire if he gives you a strike."

"Really?" Anise asked gleefully, as Ruby's dad chuckled.

"Scouts' honour," Ruby said, raising her hand in solemn vow; her dad laughed. Wide-eyed, she glanced at him. "_Really_! I was a Boy Scout. When I was living with the McGowans. And I was a way better Boy Scout than Sean or Finn or Evan was. And, I did used to throw snow-cones at the umpire. Especially if he struck out Miller."

Sweet Miller.

Her first boy-toy.

"I think I remember Regina telling me something like that," Dad chuckled. "But _I_ might be umpiring tomorrow."

"Hm," Ruby frowned.

"You can still throw snow-cones at him if you want," Anise said, examining the peacock-feathers. "I like these. Do you have any books?"

"I do, I do," Ruby smiled.

Having Anise in the room hindered rather than helped Ruby unpack her belongings; but with every question from Anise, Ruby's dad asked another, about the books she read, the people in the photographs on her corkboard—he particularly wanted to know about _Stacy_, Ruby's friend-who-was-a-boy in Pearl Harbour—but they made a dent in the boxes Ruby had stuffed full of books: a large bookcase was built-in beside the door to the balcony, and Anise was tasked with organising the books in alphabetical order by author: that kept her busy, while Ruby and her dad chatted; Tami came up a little later, while they were going through Ruby's books, Anise sitting curled up in one of the handmade afghans, carefully reading a Beatrix Potter book while she sucked her thumb, Ruby's immense little stereo spewing The Temptations and Small Faces.

"Nisey, time for bed," Tami called softly, offering Anise a little hot-pink Ikea cup of steaming milk as she entered the room.

"Really?" Anise asked, wincing. Ruby turned the music down subtly when the song ended, and her dad passed her back _Gravity's Rainbow_ by Thomas Pynchon.

"Ruby's going to read to you, remember?" he said, smiling.

"Yeah!" Anise beamed. She sighed, clambering off the floor. The afghan fell to the ground, as she turned, stumbled, and set _Apply Dapply's Nursery Rhymes_ on the shelf in its proper place. Clambering over the blanket, she reached for the cup her mother offered, and she gazed at it as she carefully brought it to her lips. Drinking it slowly, she kept her eyes on Ruby, who smiled; when she had finished her milk, Anise offered her hand to Ruby, who took it, and let herself be led out of the room to Anise's.

Anise's room was bright and sunny, even in the evening; almost everything was white, except for the yellow gingham blinds, and the pink-and-yellow bunting that decorated the headboard of her little big-girls bed, and a pink rug; the bed featured a blue, pearl and pink quilt, with yellow polka-dot sheets and a princess canopy; several toys and teddy-bears were dislodged as Anise climbed into bed.

In the time it had taken her to climb into her pyjamas earlier, Anise had painstakingly arranged her new origami animals on her bedside-cabinet, alongside a little goldfish aquarium, a stack of Dr Seuss and Beatrix Potter books—the same ones Ruby had in _her_ room, with their shining white dust-jackets—and the other side of the bed was a bookcase absolutely stuffed with books, and arranged with several Disney princess dolls, and another, smaller collection of Sylvanian Families animals—the elephants, badgers, periwinkle rabbit and squirrel families were apparently the most favoured—and a heap of toys, teddy-bears, dolls, plush toys and beanie-babies; a pink _Trunki_ was apparently filled with dress-up clothes, and a little white dressing-table with flower-shaped mirror and an Anise-sized upholstered stool was covered with costume jewellery, child's makeup (most of it glitter and gloss), several large, colourful butterflies, and a pink piggy-bank, featured a tiny Sylvanian dressing-table, a little white rabbit-girl perched on the tiny stool.

"Budge over, you're hogging the bed," Ruby teased, as she perched on the side of the bed; Anise fidgeted over a little more, and Ruby settled against the pillow; unabashed, Anise cuddled up to her, resting her forehead against Ruby's neck, her eyelashes tickling as she sucked her thumb, handing her _Holes_.

For half an hour, Ruby read—doing all the voices, of course—until Anise's eyes started to grow heavy-lidded, and Dad showed up, gently turning off the light, so that the tiny aquarium illuminated the bedside-cabinet; he clicked on a little _Lilo_ _and_ _Stitch_ nightlight and as Ruby extricated herself from a dozing Anise, he tucked the little girl in. Ruby slipped out of the room, suddenly tired herself, and her dad left Anise's bedroom-door open a little as he left the room.

"Do you want to come down for a drink, or are you going to head to bed?" her dad asked, smiling at her.

"I might stay up here, get some things unpacked," Ruby said. "I'll try and be quiet."

"Oh, don't worry; Tami's always playing music in the workshop," Dad smiled. "And I'm always listening to it in the study. Anise is used to it."

"Oh. Okay. Cool!" Ruby smiled. "Man, reading to kids at bedtime makes you _tired_."

"There were times I used to fall asleep _before_ you when I read to you as a baby," her dad chuckled. "Alright, well—I'll come and say goodnight when we turn in, but—goodnight." He smiled, and opened his arms for a hug. Smiling, Ruby hugged back. Dad stroked her hair before releasing her, and made his way downstairs, leaving her alone.

For the first time since she had arrived, she was alone. Ruby sighed, tired, and turned back to what was now her new bedroom. Decorated for her by her soon-to-be step_mother_. She shut the door as she entered her room, and without the hindrance of irrepressible Anise, who had wanted to investigate _everything_ about her new _sister_, Ruby did what she knew best; unpacking boxes. She was an expert at packing them, too, but no matter where she was, which country, which hemisphere, she could always make her bedroom her _home_ as soon as her things were set out properly.

Her books; DVDs; video-games (and consoles); her copious amounts of CDs were all arranged in the bookcase, while she wondered whether she could ask her dad to mount her corkboard onto the wall—kicking herself for not having asked earlier—above her bed, as that was the only stretch of wall wide enough to accommodate its size. Her suitcases, and the duffel-bags she had brought with her today, were all methodically unpacked—they were methodically _packed_, which made it all the easier; everything had been freshly-laundered yesterday, so the only dirty clothing she had were those garments she wore. She put away her tops, t-shirts, skirts, shorts, jeans (almost all stolen from boys-who-were-friends), and hung up shirts, blouses and dresses in the closet: she stored the empty suitcases on the shelf at the top of the closet, her shoes in the large cubby-holes built in to the right-hand-side of the closet, in which her bedding and several towels were stored; a mirror backed onto one of the closet doors, and she yawned as she examined her reflection.

Too tall; her elbows were knobbly; her cheekbones were exquisite; she had her father's eyes, and her Nana Freya's lips; her collarbones were just noticeable enough, but didn't stick out like ultra-skinny girls' would; her little cleavage looked really sweet in the expensive-but-on-sale _Agent Provocateur_ bra she had put on before leaving the house for dinner. Her eyes were tired, soft smudges beneath them. She _was_ tired. She unpacked her things from her laptop-case, tucked her camera-bag down beside her new desk, and set the rocking-chair by the bay-window, with the wicker-basket of projects, her knitting-bag, and the little upholstered footstool she used to rest her feet while she was working in her chair. She climbed into her sleep-shirt (a threadbare white t-shirt that had once belonged to Jake, soft as baby's skin) and continued to unpack the boxes.

With every box she emptied, she flattened it, and rested it out in the hall: she arranged her books; her CDs; her shoes; handbags; trinkets; scrapbooks and makeup; her stationary; pots of pens; tubs of scrapbooking equipment, stickers and brads and papers; and her lever-arch folders filled with photograph negatives; her collection of journals, all from the same company and each in a different colour, varying in the hues of the rainbow once they were set up, stuffed with writings, photographs, little paintings and mementos; her three unique jewellery-boxes; a stack of magazines; folders of knitting-patterns; prettily-decorated shadow-boxes; hand-written, photograph-filled and illustrated recipe-books she had bound herself; white ornate-framed pin-boards for little displays; her chargers and just random things that got lumped into the same boxes because they belonged nowhere else. What she didn't have?

School-things. She had no past papers, no random sheets of algebra equations, no tests with circled A+ marks; no report-cards. She had no textbooks she had forgotten to return to her schools in the craziness of moving; she had no heavy backlog of saved notes. But she did have a small box of projects, like the elephant one Anise had shown her earlier, of things she was proud of. Most of them, she had completed during sixth-grade. Others had been salvaged from one of the Lieutenant Commander's many attempts to cleanse every particle of personality from her government-issue home, in an attempt to actually remember that Ruby had had a childhood, and that she had made cute stuff she'd look back at later in life, when her own kids brought home silver dough-stars decorated with kidney-beans and pasta, and faded Christmas-tree stars made from toilet-roll, card, yellow-paint and, once upon a time, gold glitter: there were some of her sporting medals (she had left the few trophies behind at the McGowans' house, for safekeeping) and birthday-cards from her grandparents, her quite weighty collection of letters from her numerous pen-friends in the Middle-East.

There was her red workbook from kindergarten; finger-paintings and art-projects, like a colourful laminated golden-beige bunny she had made with moving arms and legs, wearing a green dress decorated with yellow-throated white Narcissus blossoms, reading _The Secret Garden _in one hand and eating a melting pink ice-cream in the other, a little straw-boater with a sunflower and a pink bow perched between her ears, little yellow ballet-slippers on her feet: Ruby had made it in fifth-grade. There was the little half-pomegranate cushion she had sewn so spectacularly by hand in her sixth-grade Home Ec class, with tiny crocheted 'seeds' glittering with iridescent red beads: and the accompanying school newsletter with a picture of her holding the cushion, an example of the best work in the class, something she had been so _proud_ of. There was her sixth-grade report-card; all A-pluses. Then there was the illustrated writing-project from fourth-grade, where she had won a prize. And a small bowl she had made during a brief few lessons on pottery in her third-grade art class, glazed with a pale-green background, with several gold, silver and rose rings painted around the side, and on the bottom of the inside. There was the composition-notebook filled with journal 'assignments', writing something every day in second-grade. And there were photographs from first-grade, and kindergarten. As a child, she had moved nearly every year, all throughout the Middle-East and Turkey: yet she remembered the names of each of the children in her classes, and was even still in contact with a handful of them.

With a sudden stab of resentment, Ruby found herself thinking that all of Anise's accomplishments would be duly hoarded for her parents to look at and cluck over fondly, amazed how she was growing and learning. She might possibly live her entire childhood out in this house, attend the same elementary-school, same middle-school, graduate with the same group of kids in high-school. Her resentment didn't last long; Ruby was here now.

Nothing else really mattered besides that fact.

That, and she got to frighten the life out of the older McGowan boys tomorrow when she showed up at their house unannounced!

She wondered if Finn would assume she'd run away.

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><p><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	5. Chapter 5

**A.N.**: Please review!

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><p><strong>All Quiet on the East Coast<strong>

_05_

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><p>"Ruby."<p>

Ruby grumbled, blissful in the decadent cocoon of deep sleep; she'd had the most wonderful dream about Stacy and Garrett last night. Shortly followed by her favourite dream, of flying. Not technically flying, but racing down the highway, the wind pushing tears from her eyes, her hair flying, the roar of an engine tuned up tight music to her ears as the rumble reverberated right through her entire body, heat drenching her from a blistering sun in a limitless sky.

"_Ruby_." She nestled deep into the cocoon that was her warm duvet and several of her handmade blankets. Ruby was a glut for comfort and heat.

Something poked her face rather sharply, and Ruby's head jerked up; in the sunshine streaming through the now-uncovered bay window, she could see a golden halo, and something black. She blinked her eyes several times, before Anise came into focus.

Last night she'd gone to bed with a flyaway ponytail, in _Sleeping Beauty_ pyjamas. Now she was fresh-faced, her hair shining, combed and arranged in a neat bun, pinned into place; she was also wearing a tiny little black leotard and pale-pink tights.

"Hi," Ruby grumbled. She'd dreamt of her future Kerouac-esque Harley ride through Monument Valley again; this time, she'd had _peach_ pie at the end of it. Last time, she'd tried key-lime, and the times before those, she'd tried chocolate, cherry and blueberry. Each pie was delicious, in her dream. Now she wanted pie.

"I made you Lucky Charms," Anise said excitedly. "Before I have to go to ballet. Mommy says it might be too early for me to bug you. But we have to talk about my t-ball practice."

"I'm up," Ruby murmured. She sighed deeply, still in the clutches of decadent sleep. She licked her lips, and opened her eyes again, squinting at Anise. She managed to haul herself out of bed, Anise dimpling with a little smirk at Ruby undoubtedly flashing her floral cotton-covered bottom before her t-shirt fell into place around the tops of her thighs; she wasn't shy about her body, and usually, because she most of the time had a boy with her, slept in the nude; they were just lucky she'd put on a t-shirt, instead of slipping into bed in only her cute little thong. She grabbed her jeans from the rocking-chair, and rubbed her face as she followed Anise, who bounded downstairs.

The island was set with two pink Ikea bowls and cups; _Lucky Charms_ marshmallow-cereal floated colourfully in the bowls, and chocolate milk frothed in the cups. Ruby couldn't help a smile, even as tired as she was; she had gone to bed at one a.m., and looking at the clock, it was now only eight. Anise had obviously set out breakfast for them.

"Thank you for getting me up early, Anise," Ruby said, waking up a tiny bit after slinging back half her chocolate-milk.

"You're welcome," Anise smiled, as she clambered onto the bar-stool next to Ruby.

"Where's everyone else?" Ruby asked, glancing at Anise.

"It's Saturday, so Daddy's gone for a bike-ride with his club," Anise smiled, sipping her chocolate-milk. "And Mommy's just gone into her workshop for a little while before she has to take me to ballet."

"Thank you for my breakfast," Ruby smiled, as she munched on Lucky Charms. Not her usual choice of breakfast, but a delicious treat.

"Do you like it?"

"I do."

"What do you normally have for breakfast?" Anise asked curiously. "I like Lucky Charms and Raisin Bran, and toast with Mommy's jam."

"I like yoghurt and honey," Ruby said, glancing at Anise with a smile. "Or cinnamon rolls. Or French toast, a BLT or brioche, or _pie_."

"You have pie for breakfast?" Anise dimpled, her eyes sparkling.

"When I can get it," Ruby smiled.

"Can you make pie?" Anise asked.

"I can make quite a few things," Ruby said.

"I can make fairy-cakes, with Mommy," Anise said. "And Aunt Regina lets me stir the mac-and-cheese sometimes."

"That's nice, that you help," Ruby smiled.

"Yup," Anise yawned. "Are you going to come to my game today?"

"Yes," Ruby smiled. "What time is it?"

"I have to ask Mommy," Anise frowned subtly, fidgeting in her seat as she finished her _Lucky Charms_ and chocolate-milk. _Breakfast of ballerinas_, Ruby thought, eyeing the little girl's leotard and tights.

"Are you going to show me your footwork?" she asked, and when Anise had finished her cereal, she climbed down from her seat—putting her cup and bowl neatly in the top drawer of the dishwasher—and while Ruby finished her own breakfast, she chuckled and watched Anise show her what she was learning at her ballet lessons.

It wasn't long before Tami appeared; she smelled faintly of paint, her flowery perfume tainted by it, but she was smiling, and again dressed in jeans, today in a pretty top, her flip-flops thwacking. She came bearing a little pink bag, in which the daintiest pair of elastic ballet slippers was kept. She smiled at Ruby, chiding Anise softly for waking her, but at Anise's adamant urges, Tami chuckled and asked whether Ruby had a cell-phone.

"I do, it's—" Ruby frowned, digging into her front-pockets. She shifted, smiled as her eyebrows rose, and she dug her sleek little touch-screen, keypad _Blackberry_ from her back-pocket. "Right here!"

"We forgot to exchange numbers last night," Tami smiled. "Your dad has his cell with him, and I'll leave a note on the fridge in the garage saying you're going over to the McGowans—right?—but just in case…" She pulled out her own silver cell and they plugged each others' numbers in, along with Ruby's dads, and Anise stood, looking a little wistfully at the phones.

"Mommy, can we bring Ruby to the game?" Anise asked.

"You know your game's right after practice," Tami said.

"Yeah." Anise blinked.

"So Ruby won't want to sit for an hour watching you practice, will she," Tami said gently. Anise frowned thoughtfully.

"Where's her game?" Ruby asked quietly, as Anise took Ruby's empty cup and bowl and set them in the dishwasher.

"It's at baseball-diamond three at the Sports Park," Tami said. "You know…you don't _have_ to come watch. Soon as she's with those boys, she won't notice anything else." Ruby laughed.

"No, it's cool," she smiled earnestly. "I'm _excellent_ at heckling the opposing pitcher. Although…t-ball doesn't _have_ a pitcher…"

"Matthew told me you plan to throw snow-cones at him if he strikes out Anise," Tami chuckled.

"I have been known…" Ruby said, raising her chin.

"Well, nothing with purple food-colouring, please," she chuckled.

"Blue?"

"Acceptable."

"What time does the game start?"

"Two o'clock," Tami smiled. She nodded at her daughter. "I'll be taking Anise to get groceries after ballet's over, so we probably won't be back for lunch, just in case you decide to come back. But help yourself to anything. Not that there's much. We were too excited yesterday afternoon to go grocery-shopping—weren't we, Nisey?"

"Yep," Anise smiled, unabashed. She glanced up at Ruby, as her mother collected her car-keys. "I'll _try_ to win for you today, Ruby. But I'm not very good at catching."

"Oh, we'll work on that," Ruby smiled. "I'm an excellent pitcher. We'll make you the best catcher in the whole league." Anise giggled softly, and she hopped after her mother when Tami called her from the front-door.

"I'm sorry, we haven't had a key cut for you, yet," Tami said, frowning at Anise as she tugged on a pair of her tiny glittery jelly-sandals (these ones pink, where yesterday's had been translucent-silver). "The back door's unlocked, so if you get back and your dad's not home, you can still get in."

"Okay," Ruby smiled, thinking to herself that with that balcony to her room, she wouldn't be sneaking through the back-door much.

"Bye!" Anise chirped, before diving out of the house; Tami shot Ruby a smile before following after her daughter. Then Ruby was left alone again. But it was different this time. She didn't feel the undeniable urge to shower and rush off now that she was awake. She wanted to linger.

She explored, for ten minutes, wandering around the house. She found the den; her father's study, where the walls truly were groaning with books and records; she found a large, open space devoted to what looked like catering, interior-decorating, party-planning, invitation-designing things, Tami's workshop; the spare bedrooms; the in-home gym; the conservatory/greenhouse; and she located her dad's and Tami's room, for future reference should she need to gauge how much noise she could make when sneaking in and out of the house. Their room was on the opposite side of the house, a floor below, and she couldn't see any of her windows, or even that part of the house, from her dad's rear-facing windows.

She wasn't _planning_ on sneaking out or anything; but it was always best to know as many routes in and out of a house. In case _boys_ had to be snuck out. They hadn't broached the subject of dating and boyfriends last night, beyond Ruby telling her dad about Stacy in Pearl, and they hadn't discussed curfews or weekday limitations on going out. Anyway, it was the end of the summer. The best parties in this town had already been had; she had summer memories with Garrett, and she was happy. She just thought that, you know, just _in case_…she'd know she could get away with sneaking in after curfew, or sneaking a boy _out_.

Not that she was _planning_ on either, of course. If Ruby had ever had a parent with good judgment and…well, the perception that she didn't actually live alone, actually _had_ a teenaged daughter, Ruby probably would have been a well-behaved daughter. But she hadn't, and Ruby _was_ a good girl, she just had no rules, and made them up for herself. The biggest? _No_ unprotected sex. Ever. No hard drugs; pot was acceptable, in company she trusted. Like Stacy. No riding in cars with drunk boys. She'd learned to drive ages ago—truck _and_ bike—not through getting her permit or anything, but out of necessity. She had come to realise that she did her best work while suffering paralysing terror, and now she travelled as surely on two wheels as she did on two legs. Or four; little or small. She collected her skateboard from the hall as she made her way back upstairs, deciding to shower and get ready.

Her hair half blow-dried after a shower—but not combed; she had soft, luxurious thick hair that curled beautifully to her bottom—she pulled on a short white circle-crocheted mini-skirt, and a threadbare cocoa t-shirt with a logo so faded it was no longer discernable, if it ever had been. She clasped a sinuous gold necklace with a _tiny_ circle around her throat; it had come, as most of jewellery had, from _Dogeared_, and she loved that the circle represented karma. She tugged on a battered pair of Converse sneakers, and frowned between the sand-beige and the black mini Danike Go-Go bag she used when she was going out for the day; she decided on the beige, and put into it her cell; her digital camera, and her small, old film one; Gramity's 'Pinktober' fuchsia aluminum bottle filled with mango iced-tea from the refrigerator; her iPod Nano; her incredibly soft, battered baseball mitt; her purse, and, after she had put on her sparse makeup selection for the day, she added her little hand-sewn makeup bag (in which she also kept a few condoms and sachets of lubricant—she was a Boy Scout after all; "Always be prepared" and all that shit), zipped it all up, remembered to put sun-cream on her arms and legs, before covering the smell with a few dabs of her very expensive _Serge Lutens_ 'El Attarine' perfume.

Making sure the front-door was locked behind her, Ruby set out, her little backpack nestled in the small of her back comfortably, and she threw her skateboard down and leapt atop it.

Within _minutes_—how _delightful_ was that! She was _minutes_ away from her favourite people in the whole world now!—she had entered the McGowans' neighbourhood, shooting into midair as she took the humpback redbrick bridge, and crouching down as the wheels hit tarmac once more; so early in the morning, as she directed her board up the street, and around the next corner, pushing off quickly toward the familiar entrance to the McGowans' enormous corner property, the first on the street to the left, she noticed that the McGowan house seemed quiet. Not _silent_, as it would be at four in the morning, but _quiet_; the teenagers, at least, she highly doubted would be awake already.

Her chest ached, in a really _good_ way: the house that was so familiar, haunted her dreams so unremittingly—the Cathy to her Heathcliff, if inanimate objects could hold the same fascination and obsessive love—that to see it again… She had _missed_ this place. Any time she allowed herself introspection and wallowing, her thoughts returned here. Without fail.

Could Ruby have chosen her home, growing up, she would always have said "the McGowans' house". _Always_. She had hated the Lieutenant Commander for taking her from it. From _them_; the McGowans.

She grabbed her skateboard from the ground, and made her way around the house, peeking into the garage through the glass panel in the scuffed back-door: the climbing-tree still sprawled beautifully, up to the window of the bedroom Ruby and Finn had once shared; that window was so easy to jimmy and climb up to, it was ridiculous, and her ease at climbing had grown the second summer she had spent here, when she had neared thirteen; there was the colossally strong, gnarled limb ten feet up, from where she had fallen and broken her leg—she had been screaming for an hour before Sean had finally come to see why she was yelling.

The patio featured a large, sun-bleached table and chairs, as well as a very large barbecue; the ground was scattered with boys' toys and sporting equipment; a good handful of colourful water-guns; a coiled hose; buckets and sodden towels the boys obviously hadn't bothered to bring in after a water-fight: the ramshackle shed she and Finn had used as their 'hideout'—inside which they had gotten up to such nefarious deeds as trying their first cigarette, tasting their first beers (stolen from Sean) andhaving their first kisses—was overgrown with ivy, and the entire yard had that careful negligence that made it so wonderfully natural; the grass was cut haphazardly, trampled where the boys ran around: a makeshift baseball-diamond was marked out; a badminton-net strung up; and attached to the back of the garage was the basketball hoop Finn and Evan had butted heads jumping for, splitting Finn's lip and cutting Evan's forehead when Evan had head-butted Finn's mouth accidentally; they'd both needed stitches. Miller had cuddled with her for two hours when Sean had accidentally shut his finger in the back-door leading right into the kitchen: there was the place where Doug had crashed his bike, chipping a tooth. The lawn was where they had, both summers Ruby had lived here, camped out under the stars as a _family_—except Regina and Caleb, the latter being only a baby at the time. But they no longer had the brick-trimmed pit over which they used to toast marshmallows for S'mores, listening to John tell spooky stories, Sean and Regina creeping up on them to scream and scare the life out of them.

She crept up to the back-door, one of two that led into the main house (another being the back garage-door, which squeaked badly, or had, the last time she was here), and peeked through the glass panels before grinning; two figures sat at the kitchen-table, both in pyjamas, sipping steaming mugs of coffee, going over newspapers or magazines. One, dark-haired and still beautiful, the other, an aging-rock-star kind of godlike handsomeness of blonde hair, strong jaw and broad shoulders. Ruby found the door unlocked, and grinned as she soundlessly turned the knob and peeked her head around.

"Boo," she said, and John and Regina glanced up as she grinned. For a split-second, they gaped in subtle incredulity—perhaps a lack of instant recognition; it had been four years, after all—but John grinned, and Regina gasped, her entire face lighting up with utter, unabashed delight, and Ruby slipped into the house, leaning her skateboard against the counter, closing the door behind her.

"Oh my _god_!" Regina laughed, darting out of her seat in a whirl of pink robe, slippers and long dark hair; she looked just the same to Ruby, who grinned as she hugged back the woman she was alarmed to find was actually _shorter_ than her. In her mind, she'd believed Regina would always be taller, that larger-than-life goddess of motherhood. Regardless of the height difference, when Regina hugged Ruby it was with that same strength and warmth Ruby remembered; she clung back, grinning like an idiot, closing her eyes briefly as the familiar scent of rose with an almost leathery warmth enveloped her, the way her soft hair smelled faintly of coconut, the way it used to during the summer months when they'd head to the beach and live off of fish and chips, lemonade and popsicles.

"How did you get over the border?" John chuckled, as he opened his arms for a huge hug as soon as Regina had relinquished her; Ruby grinned and darted into his arms, chuckling, and he hugged her fiercely; it was nice to hug someone and not have to stoop: John McGowan was still taller than her; he'd once played ball against Michael Jordan.

"Stowed away," Ruby grinned.

"When'd you get _tall_, Ruby?" John asked, as he set her at arm's length, grinning handsomely. "I should've put you in _basketball_ not baseball." Ruby laughed.

"Wouldn't have done you much good," she chuckled. "Me, organised sports; girls can't play Major League Basketball."

"Oh, yeah; sports sexism," John chuckled, and Ruby shot him an amused smirk.

"Come on, you know I'd have athletes straightened out and stopping _whining_ if I was allowed to terrorise their locker-rooms," she grinned, and John chuckled.

"Given the way the boys have slipped up the last few years, we can honestly say you _do_ keep things running tight," John chuckled, and Regina smiled indulgently.

"Slipped up?" Ruby quirked an eyebrow.

"Yes, I think it's about time they had a mandatory re-education at Ruby Thorne's Boot-Camp," Regina grinned.

"Where _are_ the boys, anyway?" Ruby asked, glancing around; evidence of them was _everywhere_, but she could neither see nor hear movement anywhere in the house. "I know it's early, but Caleb's five, right? Shouldn't he've been racing around driving you nuts for hours already?"

"God bless _PlayStation_," John chuckled.

"The boys went to a party last night," Regina smiled, as she refilled John's coffee-mug and offered Ruby some.

"No, thanks," Ruby smiled, smiling mischievously. "So…they were at a party, hmm…" She glanced at John. "Do you have that old bullhorn, by any chance?" John laughed.

"I don't want to provoke a mutiny of hungover teenaged boys," he chuckled, and Regina smiled as she offered Ruby juice or a doughnut; knowing the way this house worked, Ruby beamed and took a fresh glazed doughnut from the box, before the boys could come down and get their grubby little hands all over them. "It would _not_ be pretty."

"Thank you. Are you sure?" Ruby asked, as she sipped the juice Regina had poured for her; she climbed into a chair at the table, where John was going through the sports section; she grabbed a pencil left on the deep ledge of the window soaking the table with light, on which were stacked books two-deep, at least six-high, and took the Sudoku puzzles and difficult crossword. "'Cause I'm betting I'm still bigger than Doug at least."

"Yeah, but he'll fight you back now if you try and sit on his head," John chuckled.

"_Try_? I always managed it," Ruby smiled. "It's me smacking his head into the wall you have to worry about."

"That was warranted," Regina smiled softly.

"Does he still peep?" Ruby asked thoughtfully; John glanced up from the sports-section, eyebrows raised in mild alarm. Regina chuckled softly.

"Not now that he's found Sean's old collection of _magazines_," she said carefully, with a shiver of distaste; Ruby grimaced.

"So… _So_! Tell me all about the happenings in the life and times of the McGowan clan," Ruby smiled eagerly, glancing from John to Regina. "I haven't heard _anything_ for _four_ years! Do you finally have that little daughter you've always wanted?" John chuckled softly.

"After you?" he asked, grinning. "Why mess with perfection?"

"Isn't that the truth," Ruby grinned, winking back; he chuckled. She glanced at Regina. "So Caleb was the last, huh?"

"Yes," Regina smiled warmly, sipping her coffee.

"Well, I have been hearing _all_ about him from Anise," Ruby said, and Regina and John exchanged a quick glance.

"So…you've met Tami and Anise, then?" Regina prompted carefully. Ruby smiled.

"Yep. Unexpected, to say the least—but then, I didn't give Daddy much of a chance to get a word in edgeways on the drive from the airport, so…" Ruby chuckled, and Regina. "Tami seems nice. And I cannot for the life of me put my finger on who Anise reminds me of…" John laughed outright at that, and Regina's warm eyes danced.

"She's just as precocious as you were at the same age," Regina smiled.

"She told me she's going to marry Finn," Ruby said thoughtfully. She'd once believed she would marry Finn also. "Do you still have that, um, sapphire-turquoise dress? You should wear it to the wedding—oh! And Anise says that _you're_—" she nudged John's leg under the table, catching his attention as he smiled, "a babe. That's an exact quote." John laughed again, giving a little shrug as if to say, _Yeah. This is news?_

"Do you know, I think you used to say things in the same vein, Ruby," Regina laughed softly, sipping her coffee. "Between you and, um, Megan—Megan Meade, d'you remember her? It was a while ago since you saw her—you two were infatuated with John." John's chuckle was deep and good-natured; Ruby grinned.

"Well, yeah," Ruby smiled. "That's 'cause we thought John looked like Prince Philip from_ Sleeping Beauty_. Except, without the tights, of course." She frowned into the distance. "Although, having watched Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, during Will and Kate's wedding, I've gone off princes named Philip."

"Oh, did you watch the royal wedding?" Regina smiled. "The boys actually let me have the TV that day."

"Wasn't she _stunning_?" Ruby breathed, beaming. "Everyone was going on and on the next day about how Pippa looked _so_ fabulous, even with her great big fat arse in that little white dress—I mean, the dress _was_ pretty, but it was Kate's day! She looked _absolutely_ _beautiful_!"

"I loved it when she walked out onto the balcony and saw just how many people were gathered outside Buckingham Palace," Regina smiled warmly. "And how Will turned to her and said she looked beautiful. And her dress was lovely. So _elegant_."

"It was very unassuming. I liked that," Ruby smiled. "Very old-world, Grace Kelly elegant. And the tiny little bouquet of lily-of-the-valley! Have you seen pictures of their _cake_? I've got a copy of a photograph of it on my corkboard. I'd happily sell my soul for a _reason_ to have a wedding-cake like that!" Regina's smile was so broad, it touched every part of her body; she leaned over to envelope Ruby in another hug, kissing her cheek this time as well.

"It is so _good_ to have you here again, Ruby," Regina hummed softly, nuzzling her cheek affectionately before brushing a lock of Ruby's long, curling hair away from her face. "We've missed you around here."

"I've missed you, too," Ruby said, smiling lazily, as she hugged Regina back with one arm, nestling her head against Regina's shoulder.

"So, I think the last time we heard from your mother…you were in _D.C._?" John said, folding his paper and setting it aside on the table, where everything, Ruby noticed, was arranged in height-order, just as everything on the island and counters were; the work of Miller, she recalled.

"_That's_ the last time the Lieutenant Commander bothered to call you?" Ruby blurted, wide-eyed and appalled.

"Well, your dad told us you were coming up from South Carolina," Regina said, a soft frown playing at her pretty features. Ruby exhaled heavily.

"Okay, well, you asked for it; the Ruby Saga," she said, her shoulders feeling suddenly heavy as she fidgeted in her seat for a more comfortable position, and picked apart her doughnut. "Okay, so… After I was _dragged_ from here, we spent four months in Rammstein. Came back to the States—San Diego for three months; D.C. for five. Then there was…" She counted on her fingers, "six months in Israel; five in _Japan_… The Lieutenant Commander went on another T.O.D., so I went to live with Gramity in Florida. That only lasted five months. Next to living here, it was my favourite time in my whole life. Then we had six months in Italy; moved to Pearl Harbour for _seven_ months… Then there was three months in Greece, and then back Stateside to Charleston, for four months. And now I'm here."

"That's…" John frowned, an odd expression on his face as he tried to quickly calculate and absorb what she'd said to the fullest implications.

"Forty-eight months, ten moves," Ruby said, sighing. "Averages out to about a hundred and forty-nine days in any one place. Or four months. I did the math."

"How did you manage at school with all that upheaval?" Regina gasped, looking horrified and a little upset. Ruby blurted a laugh. _School_? When she saw Regina was serious, she cleared her throat, whistled and reached for the first book she found on the windowsill.

"Hey, who's reading _The Little Prince_?" she asked, genuinely curious. One of the _McGowan_ boys had read Antoine de Saint-Exupery? The last time she had been here, it was all Tony Hawk, _Grand Theft Auto_ and the Red Sox. Who did all these _books_ belong to?

"_Ruby_," Regina said, in that warning tone Ruby's own Jiminy Cricket conscience had come to emulate: Ruby was a firm believer in following her own code of conduct, and she believed in karma more than anything. She glanced up in time to see the darkly significant look John and Regina exchanged. She fidgeted uncomfortably; few things made her _uncomfortable_, per se; but now she was sat before John and Regina McGowan, who had _always_ noticed even the tiniest things about her life. She knew, as she had known since the Lieutenant Commander had hauled her away to Rammstein at the beginning of seventh-grade, that she would never have gotten away with what she'd done the last four years if she'd been living under the McGowans' roof. They would have noticed. They would have _cared_. And they would have grounded her until she was thirty-eight for not going to school for three _months_.

"I _tried_," Ruby said softly, her voice catching slightly, and she blinked several times as she glanced away from Regina, not wanting her to know… Well, that by all accounts, Ruby should still be completing seventh-grade. "But I didn't speak_ German_. So that was four months down the drain, September to December. I was in San Diego only between Winter and Spring Break, then we moved to D.C., the last two and a half months of the school-year. Then we went to Israel. I did okay there; I got my Hebrew and Arabic back up to scratch, at least… Three months of my time in Japan, I was at school. But I didn't speak a word of Japanese until the end; all the lessons were given in Japanese. That…frustrated me to tears. The best I did was with Gramity in Florida. Italy…I didn't do much; went travelling on weekends, mostly. Then nobody cared that I didn't show up, so I made them _long_ weekends… I got to loving surfing too much in Pearl during the summer when fell in with Stacy, and he was dyslexic so he hated school and loved ditching class to go to the beach… I didn't even bother going to school in Greece, those three months I was there. What was the point, you know? I got to Charleston at the end of May…just around the time everyone was doing their finals. So there was no point… Then it was three months tuning up bikes and Garrett's truck, and just…" She trailed off with a sigh. She hated that she had to tell John and Regina these things; because they would _never_ have let her get away with it, and she had numerous times overheard them talking very angrily about the way the Lieutenant Commander treated her—as if she didn't exist.

For a moment, Regina and John sat in stunned silence. No other girl in the _world_ could get away with what she'd done—or _not_ done—the last four years. But then, no other girl moved on average every four months; who was going to notice if she didn't show up to school, when they'd barely learned her name anyway? And who cared about her transcript when she was there one month, gone after the next two? Sometimes she'd hand in a homework assignment, and be the other side of the world before the teacher had had time to grade it.

"So the last time you went to school, was…?" John frowned. Ruby fidgeted, feeling flushed and uncomfortable, and suddenly unhappy. _Damn it, do not introspect_.

"I went sometimes, in Pearl," Ruby said, flushing unhappily. _Yeah, just enough to avoid expulsion. When you weren't already suspended for ditching_. "And…sometimes, in Italy. Gramity made sure I went every day, and we sat together at the table doing my homework while Gramity did her scrapbooks." But those five consecutive months of unbroken school attendance two years ago had been the pinnacle achievement in her educational career since sixth-grade.

"Didn't your mother ever…?" John frowned.

"Notice that I wasn't going to school?" Ruby half-laughed. She smiled sadly at him, sighing. "Been a long while since we've seen each other, huh?" She sighed, chewed on a bit of doughnut, and laughed suddenly. "Hell, the Lieutenant Commander didn't even think I'd be sexually-active 'til she caught me with Garrett the other day." She laughed again, happily, slapping her palm once on the table. "Shocked the hell out of her!" She laughed to herself, replaying the scene over in her head, as she had several times since the Lieutenant Commander had come back way too early from the base, and found Ruby and Garrett having sex on the sofa. She sighed, yawning subtly. In her periphery vision, she saw John and Regina exchange almost horrified glances. "Anyway, it's not like I've let myself get stupid or anything. I _consume_ books; I always take a handful with me whenever I travel—which is a lot. I've got a collection of library-cards from where I've spent days reading. I haven't let a lack of schooling affect my education. Isn't that the Twain quote, or something like it?"

Anyone else, with a parent so utterly self-absorbed and clueless as the Lieutenant Commander, would have taken the opportunity to just spend their days doing absolutely fuck-all, playing video-games and goofing off. Sometimes, yes, Ruby did indulge in that; but since she would gain no education from going to school, she put her energies into borrowing books from libraries and memorising their contents, just so that nobody could call her stupid, even if her school-grades would support that statement. She frowned. "Although, there is that quote about the self-taught man." She glanced at John and Regina, who were communicating silently. "How do you think I should go about explaining all this to _Daddy_?" she asked, grimacing softly. She looked at Regina for a response.

"Your mother's got a lot to answer for," Regina said softly, with just the right amount of undercurrent anger. Ruby laughed suddenly, softly.

"Yeah. Good thing she's going into a war-zone," she said, popping the last of her doughnut into her mouth. "D'you think Daddy might kill her?"

"Well, _I'm_ very close to flying out to beat the hell out of your mother," Regina frowned.

"_Mom_, did you just say 'hell'?" a young voice cooed tauntingly, and a little boy with blonde hair and a cat-and-cream grin came dashing into the kitchen. Regina caught Ruby's eye and rolled her own briefly before she smiled at the little boy. Glad for the change of subject, Ruby smiled at the boy as he reached the table and climbed into his dad's lap; John tucked his long arms around the little boy, nestling him comfortably in his lap.

"Well, well, this _must_ be the infamous Caleb I've been hearing so much about," Ruby grinned. Ian would be about eleven now; but Caleb had been a baby when she'd been dragged, tooth-and-nail, from this house those years ago. "They're so cute before the forked-tail and horns grow in." Regina chuckled, the tension from their previous topic of conversation breaking, if not forgotten; Caleb peeked shyly at Ruby from his dad's lap. The last time she had seen Caleb, they had spent the week at the beach, and he had toddled to her at her every coo, following her around, picking shells and sand-dollars from the sand, giggling when she'd dumped buckets of water over his head, dressed in his tiny little board-shorts, clinging to her fingers and focused entirely on licking his melting frozen custard. There were photographs somewhere. He'd always been her favourite of the younger McGowan boys: Miller had been quiet and sweet, living with Asperger's, but had definitely liked her; Doug had been an irritating shit whose skull must bear at least a hundred healed contusions from all the times Ruby had knocked his head into the wall or thrown him down onto the ground to sit on his head. Ian had been a little older than Caleb was now, and irritating.

Getting down and dirty was the only way to deal with these boys. The U.N. held no sway in this neck of the woods. Regina's and John's word was law: As Regina's superintendent, Ruby's word had been too. And she had dealt with dissent with Roman brutality. Those memories made her smile, and Caleb gazed at her.

"Caleb, say hello," Regina smiled softly.

"Hi," Caleb said shyly.

"Hi," Ruby grinned. "Your girlfriend Anise has told me all about you."

"You know Nisey?" Caleb smiled.

"She's going to be my _stepsister_," Ruby said, smiling, and Regina caught her eye; Ruby smiled, then turned back to Caleb. "She's cute, huh?"

"She has pretty hair," Caleb said, fiddling with the neck of his dad's pyjama t-shirt (a Red Sox t-shirt).

"You like her hair?" Ruby grinned. "Well, I tell you what, you are one lucky man, because I saw her this morning in her little black leotard—she has one cute little tush!" Regina laughed, and John chuckled; Caleb grinned and fidgeted in his dad's lap.

"_Mom_!" a young voice called—and this time, a slightly older boy clattered into the kitchen, yawning; he looked about ten or eleven, just beginning to show signs of starting that transition to leave behind that intrinsic chubbiness of youth. Like his father and little-brother, he wore a Red Sox t-shirt, but he had already pulled on a pair of grass-stained jeans.

"And who are you?" Ruby asked, as he approached the table, dragging the box of Trix toward him.

"I'll tell you for a dollar," the boy said, and Regina frowned as John turned a laugh into a tut.

"Well, I don't have a dollar on me," Ruby said, frowning at the boy. Ten or eleven meant _Ian_. "But how about a quarter shoved up your nose?" He blinked, then his features morphed into one of remembered terror.

"You're _Ruby_!" he blurted, horrified, and darted away from her. John laughed, as his second-youngest son scrambled away from a _girl_. Ruby grinned at Regina.

"It's so nice to see my legacy is still intact around here," she said, and Regina laughed. While Ian stared at her, careful to keep out of arm's reach—she had taken delight in stuffing Ian into the laundry-hamper and sitting on the lid, deaf to his cries, until either Sean or Evan paid her a few dollars to release him. "So, uh, John, where did we land on that whole bullhorn idea? Because," she checked her plain silver watch, "I think it's about time I go and give Finn his wake-up call."

"No dice," John chuckled.

"Why not?" Ruby blurted indignantly. "You're gonna have to cough it up later, anyways, otherwise how will I orchestrate the dirty cheers at Anise and Caleb's t-ball game?"

"You're coming to my t-ball game?" Caleb smiled shyly.

"You bet I am!" Ruby grinned. "Anise made me promise." She frowned, smiled, then chuckled, "I'm surprised she didn't try to coerce me into a tutu and attend her ballet lesson with her."

"Are you still dancing?" Regina asked, sipping her coffee, as she looked through a magazine that had to be the _only_ feminine thing in this entire house. Ruby quirked an eyebrow.

"After Sean's minor disagreement with my tibia?" she said, and John chuckled. "Alas, your firstborn has deprived the world of their _finest_ prima ballerina." She sighed, shaking her head, as footsteps echoed on the kitchen stairs. She frowned, wondering… "What's Super-Dope up to these days?" Ruby asked, and squawked as someone grabbed her around the neck in a headlock, thick, tanned muscles bulging beautifully.

"Super _what_?" someone grunted dangerously, and Ruby grinned, choking as she tried to free herself. It was the expression in the voice, not the voice itself, that Ruby recognised; she had always teased Sean, building on what she heard his parents saying about him squandering his brains tinkering away on bikes. But she had always been somewhat enamoured with him, hero-worshipping him for his love of bikes even as she taunted him for letting people think he was willingly letting himself be seen as stupid.

"Sean!" she gurgled a laugh, and when he released her, she grinned once again as her eyes rested Sean McGowan, even as her insides disappeared entirely, replaced with something rapturous and molten.

If ever there was a boy mothers everywhere warned their daughters against dating, it would be Sean McGowan, Ruby suspected. Gorgeous dark hair, his warm eyes were fringed with beautiful lashes, almost _delicate_; he had a handsome, straight nose, very beautiful lips, and his beautifully masculine jaw was dusted with stubble; he stood two inches or so taller than Ruby, shirtless, gorgeously tanned and _muscled_. When he released her, Ruby laughed, grinning, even as she noted the Orange County Choppers logo tattooed on Sean's right bicep.

_Boy could rival Garrett Hedlund in that Jeff Bridges movie_, Ruby thought; Sean took _The Little Prince_ from her, and Ruby stared curiously as he meandered in low-slung jeans to the counter, where he picked up the coffee-pot and poured himself a steaming mug. Her insides slipped, as she gazed at his broad, broad shoulders, the narrow dip of his trim waist, and all the sculpted, tanned muscles in between; his jeans were those relaxed-fit kind, just dark enough, worn in the right places, and showed off the two subtle dimples at the base of his slim waist where he wasn't wearing a shirt. He was also barefoot, and shuffled around the kitchen idly.

"I thought your first tat was gonna be 'I (heart) Mom'," Ruby said, quickly thinking something to cover up her staring at him in blatant appreciation while Regina watched her carefully from the corner of her eye.

"That's on my ass," Sean grumbled softly; he hadn't had such a gorgeously deep voice the last time Ruby had been here, but the expression in it was still the same; soft, warm, and now bearing an odd mixture of decadence and subtle menace. As Ruby laughed, Regina chided her eldest softly, frowning, Ruby supposed, at Sean's language. As Sean sipped his coffee, he kept his gaze on Ruby. Lowering his mug, he said softly, "Should've known you'd be comin' round when I saw all the neighbourhood pets running in circles yesterday." Ruby burst out laughing as John chuckled, and Regina rolled her eyes, standing to make Caleb some cereal.

"If they were, it's only because they live on _this_ street, with you and your brothers in such close proximity," Ruby pointed out earnestly. Sean smirked subtly, sipping his coffee. Those warm eyes were strangely unsettling as they rested on her. She felt her cheeks warming—something that hadn't happened since the days of _Jake_.

"Well, I'm going to head upstairs," Ruby said lightly, grinning at the thought of surprising Finn. She clambered up from the table, Sean's eyes widening as he took in how _tall_ she was. "Is Finn still in our old room?"

"No, he's in Sean's old room," Regina smiled. Ruby glanced from Regina to Sean, then grimaced as she turned back to Regina.

"You did sprinkle the bed with Holy water first, right?" she asked under her breath, and Regina smirked subtly as Sean quirked an eyebrow, setting his coffee-mug down, and clapped a large, strong hand on her bottom as she passed to the stairs. With a little yelp, half-skipping her next step, she whirled around, foot on the first step.

"That's not fun, Stanley!" she cooed, eyebrows raised as she pointed a threatening finger; but she was smiling.

"When'd you start reading Tennessee Williams?" Sean frowned disconcertedly.

"When'd you start _reading_?" Ruby retorted, pointing to _The Little Prince_ on the counter by his coffee-mug. He didn't respond, just gave her a typical _Sean_ look, and Ruby laughed as she hopped upstairs, her bottom stinging a little bit where Sean's hand had connected with it. The staircase seemed shorter than the last time she'd been here. Upstairs, the hallway was just as cluttered with boys' things as the kitchen; but up here, it was worse, and the bedroom doors were all decorated to show who lived where, while piles of clothing mingled with toys, sporting equipment, magazines and cases for video-games and Ruby almost broke her neck tripping over a _Hot Wheel_ car camouflaged with the worn rug.

Sean's bedroom had once been almost taboo when Ruby had last lived here: at fourteen, he had started growing up early, and after one brief but scarring incident, Ruby and Finn had learned to knock before bursting into the room. The last time Ruby had seen Finn, he had been nearly thirteen, and as incorrigible as he was artistic; the shed had been their hideout, where they experimented with cigarettes, beer and different mediums of art; the walls had been papered with posters, and cut-outs from magazines, newspapers and comic-books; Ruby wondered whether the map on which she and Finn had plotted out their cross-country adventure was still pinned up in on the wall.

She couldn't believe Finn had moved out of their room, though; the twin-over-double bunk-bed they had shared had been their fort: their haven; the meeting-place for their secret publication _The Pickwick Portfolio_; the shadowy corner in which they had plotted their nefarious Halloween pranks. The bedroom walls had been covered, just as the shed was, with their drawings, their projects and their sketches, doodles, and murals made up of their favourite images. They had shared _everything_ when they had shared that room—Regina had wanted Ruby to have her own, but she'd insisted that she was _always_ alone; she didn't want to sleep in a room by herself when there were _seven_ boy friends to choose from—and they had become all the closer because of it. It was a remarkable thing, and an incredibly lonely revelation, that Finn was Ruby's best friend in the entire world. And all because they had shared that room.

She crept over to what had once been Sean's _You Shall Not Pass_ bedroom-door: Like all the other doors, this one was decorated so heavily that the wood was no longer visible; posters, pictures, doodles and notes were taped, pinned and pasted to the door, with a jaunty sign painted "_Huck-Finn's Room_". Ruby smiled: her old nickname for Finn had been "Huckleberry"; she had been reading _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ at the time when she had moved in with the boys, and had been enamoured of the titular character. Silently turning the knob, Ruby peeked into the bedroom beyond. It was entirely black; blackout curtains shielded Sleeping Beasty from the harmful, insulting light of _morning_. She crept over to the window, inching the curtains open a fraction, and went to stand at the foot of Finn's bed, canting her head to one side, before climbing like a monkey onto the sturdy wood footboard, squatting there on her toes, her elbows draped over her knees as she balanced.

The last time Ruby had seen Finn, he'd left behind the chubbiness of youth that Ian was now trying to shed: he'd also just gotten his first set of braces, and he used to love it when Ruby would peel an apple for him in one long strip, cutting off pieces for him to eat because he couldn't take a bite out of apples like he liked to. _Red_ _Sox_ memorabilia had dominated his wardrobe, and grass-stains had been a permanent feature of his self-styled jeans, as well as splotches of paint and the odd smudge of charcoal Regina had forbidden him from using in the house because Ian had grabbed hold of a stick and made pretty pictures all over her favourite cream blouse.

Ruby cracked a grin as she observed Finn; he was sprawled on his front, the bedding twisted around his legs. _Always loved boxer-briefs_, she thought, smiling, her mind unaccountably going to _Sean_ for some reason. And those two dimples just above the band of his relaxed jeans. For a moment, she just perched, taking in the changes in Finn's appearance. He had grown a lot taller, of course. He had Sean's broad shoulders, the same narrow waist; but his hair was a darker blonde now than when he had been a kid, more like Demerara sugar than honey-gold, and the floppy curls were sticking up at odd angles as he slept on. He still had the same sweet nose, the same lovely lips—just like…_Sean's_—and for some reason, he had a smear of dried cornflower-blue paint on the back of his left shoulder-blade.

_That's enough gawking. Start squawking_.

Taking a deep breath, Ruby leapt, screaming, "_Oh my god! Six-foot olive goblins are storming the kitchen and are stealing all the Cap'n Crunch_!" She landed straddling Finn's waist, as he yelled and jerked, half-twisting before she landed, and in the crack of sunlight she had allowed in through the curtains, his bleary expression turned even more dazed and confused as he tried to get a look at her.

"No, Finn—you're _not_ still dreaming! I really am here!"

"_Ruby_?"

"The one and only!" Ruby cooed, grinning. Finn groaned, and managed somehow to shift onto his back; Ruby smirked, fidgeting in his lap, and he groaned again, his expression turning pained. "Well hello! I'm excited to see you too!" Even half-asleep, he flushed deeply, and Ruby chuckled. He grabbed her by the waist, and with surprising strength for someone with little blood to his brain to coordinate thought, flung her from the bed. She toppled with a loud _bang_! and a fleshy _thwack_! and swore loudly, "_Fuck_!" She hauled herself off the floor. "Get up, you lazy arse! I wanna _play_!" Finn groaned, but grumbling, he dragged himself out of bed.

"I'll be down in a minute," he mumbled sleepily, eyes closed, and Ruby grinned as she darted out of the room again.

* * *

><p><strong>A.N.<strong>: AGAIN, PLEASE REVIEW!


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